Christmas hijacked by Madoff!

  For most Americans, Christmas has been Hijacked. Or whatever was left of Christmas after the dreaded R word, the non-bail out of the auto giants, but the top most question is: In the fraud dictionary, Has Madoff replaced Ponzi? Every year, I watch, good, honest, hard-working people go and lose a lot of money [...]

Light at the end of the tunnel?

To provide liquidity to the markets, the FED, the European authorities, along with their Asian counterparts have decided to swamp the banks with money. However, this is likely to come with strings (ropes?) attached. No money comes free – immaterial of whether it is called Debt or Equity. The authorities have put a lot of [...]

Be a contrarian…if you have the guts!

Some of the great classic advice that you will hear in an economy that slows down are the following: 1. Shift to cash – it is safe, at least it will not go down! 2. If you must invest, be safe get into gilts – it is almost capital protected, interest rates can only go [...]

Market timing can make you RICH!

Have you ever been tempted by newsletters, sooth sayers, channels, websites offering you immense riches by “timing the market”? I bet you have been. Each year millions of people (worldwide) spend ’000s of dollars to subscribe to newsletters, email services, sms alerts, phone calls, etc. trying to beat the market. If you see the long [...]

Life insurance simplified

The idea of life-insurance will probably first come your way when you are planning your tax returns. That’s how it is for most Indians – insurance is a tax saving device. Well, there is a lot more to life insurance that it pays to know. Let’s begin by looking at every step of getting insurance. [...]