Cheated? or plain stupid and lazy?
if there is one solid reason why you should not invest in direct equities, you may have to go back in time when shares were in non demat mode. Shares used to be strewn around and nobody knew how much of the dividends came and how much did not.
if you have 280 companies in which you hold (Held) shares, you are likely to be cheated of your rightful dividends. When you see the quality of people working in R&T agents you realize that you are lucky if there is no fraud. Then came demat. You assumed once your shares are dematted you got safe. Yes, however if you did not scream that you did not get the dividend, well, you lost it. Bad luck.
So you need to know how many shares you have, in whose names, whether in demat, and whether you got the dividend. It is sad that even if you entered your portfolio in Moneycontrol or Valueresearchonline.com or www.myiris.com – none of them generate a dividend received / should have received list. Mind you, it is easy, but none of them do it.
So now you do not have a broker, you have no clue which shares of your grandfather / father / uncle are in demat form, how many in hard copy form…you have no clue.
However if you have shares, you need to take care. See this senior citizen – her father died in 1975 and she did not make any attempt to get it transferred till 2011. That is a goodamn 36 years dammit. Read the story and then ask yourself are you like her? Then stick to mutual funds, GROWTH option. And if you have 230 folios, reduce it to 5. At age 70 you cannot handle more than that.
read the story,,,and if you are an administrative mess, try getting in touch with me, I can help you dramatically simplify it.
You will pay the fee to a charitable trust. The amount will not be small, but the money will go to charity. You need to do some charity.