Most financial planners and personal portfolio managers are questioning their basic assumption of asset allocation. In the year 2008 asset allocation failed. This of course is their conclusion based on a set of data. Data is accurate but the conclusion seems to be a little flawed. In the years from 2002 to 2007 (when Mr. [...]
I recently received the annual report of a financial services company. Like all financial services company this company also has an insurance business, a financial distribution company, a mutual fund, …the works. A quick glance clearly shows that this company will NEVER make money in ANY of the abovementioned businesses during my life time. Surely [...]
Shariah Investments in my portfolio, no thanks! Benchmark Mutual fund announced a Shariah compliant fund recently. Of course many mutual funds (Reliance, UTI, to name 2) are all in the process of launching and managing a Shariah compliant fund. What is a Shariah compliant fund? And what does it do? Shariah, the religious law of [...]
Recently one Advisor (and his associated fund house) have been pushing me to invest in a fund of funds. I am a little scared about a super supervisor over looking my funds. However Quantum Long Term equity fund was being pushed to me – really hard to invest in that fund. I decided to compare [...]
This is perhaps the most often asked question. I have seen people mess up quite dramatically. One HR consultant once called me and said “I have Rs. 52,000 where can I invest?’. So I got of on the pedal saying “Equity is good for the long term….etc”. Then when there was a blank from the [...]
One very important fallacy is called the ‘Sunk cost fallacy’ – which makes us throw more good money after money already gone bad. Typically a lender keeps lending money to one customer hoping that this will enable the borrower to do well and repay ALL the money. Another manifestation of this is called ‘Averaging’ – [...]