lessons from 2008!

I must consider my self very, very lucky. During the Harshad Mehta Boom, I bought an office space for personal usage. When the index reached 21000 I had no reason to sell. However just luckily I decided to get out of some very high price earning stocks like Tata Power, L&T, Hdfc, and invest in [...]

Meltdown: Long-term impact

When I was talking to a regulator,  he asked me “How come ULIPs (Unit linked insurance plans) charge such a high “entry” load? I told him as a distributor I can actually make more money from a customer selling mutual funds than selling ULIPs because of churn and a trail commission that is based on [...]

American meltdown: effect on India!

So at last the world is telling America a simple thing. You cannot live beyond your means for too long. When they had a huge deficit, they went to war at Afghanistan. Then at Iraq. It does not matter how much money you have – if you burn it fast enough, it will be over! [...]

US government default: Federal govt.

Governments have two major advantages. One they have an unlimited scope for income – agricultural tax, excise duty, service tax, income tax, estate duty, etc. The more worrisome advantage is their ability to print currency notes. Ask Ben Bernanke – he converts coniferous trees into billions of dollars!
The worry is for people who lend to [...]

Foreign banks: Indian frauds: who will pay?

In a country like USA where there is a decent press, democracy and a vigilant SEC, the financial fraud culprits are brought to book quite slowly, if at all. What will happen to Indian customers who have been had? How does one react to the CEO of a foreign bank saying “we will make up [...]

Market view: S Nagnath DSP Merill Lynch

Why should you know Nagnath’s view on the market? When the whole world was pessimistic about India he predicted huge cash inflows. I may not be too wrong if I say that he predicted the bull run in 2002, not in 2008! He always has a balanced view and gives excellent quotes and views to [...]