Rent vs. buy: myth busting

continuing the myth busting on rent vs. buy …. “Renting is for poor people.” Of course renting is for poor people – very much true. But it’s for rich people, too. I know if I name some of the people who live in rented houses – with their designations some of you might torch me. [...]

Investment Myths

These days it has become fashionable to do articles on “investment myth busting”. Since I cannot claim to have started this myth, I need not end it either. Let us examine them slowly (One is what we can handle in one day) Myth 1: Stock market investments will always outperform bonds and fixed-return avenues in [...]

Markets are on the way to recovery!

As the equity markets have fallen 50% in this calendar year, 2009 markets have to be up! How appealing – and could it be wrong? You bet it can be. I am a little cramped for data – I have the March ending indices and just ran through it. It is not true at all [...]

Investing sans emotion: Utvi transcript

about 10 days back did a program on Utvi on behavioural finance…here is the transcript. http://www.utvi.com/personalfinance/financial-investment-india/15714/investing-sans-emotion.html# – is where the original is, for the others, here it is being reproduced! Investing sans emotion UTVi News Desk Published on Dec 18, 2008 MUMBAI: Leaving emotions out of your financial decisions is tough. After all, it’s about [...]

Advisor’s fault, of course!

I know a few HNI investors. One thing common to all HNI investors is that they do not like to be classified as a “HNI”. This is good for the adviser too, because no 2 HNIs are alike. Some HNIs are well assured of themselves, satisfied with how their life is going and understand their [...]

Index funds – a good place to be in uncertain times

this article appeared in reuters india’s  personal financial page…. If my students do not ask “When will the market touch 21000 again?”, I ask them the same question. The most optimistic answer I have got is 6 months and the most pessimistic answer I have got is 2 years. Very clearly short term memory is [...]