Obama and moral hazard

Why is it that in the case of Satyam and in the world wide mess it is largely the equity shareholder who is losing? Welcome to the world of moral hazard. When you lend money to a bank (which may be insolvent even as you are lending) or to a country (which technically cannot become [...]

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 [...]