If you wanted to make a career in a sport would you just watch that sport on television and hope to be a world beater? No, I guess. Similarly if you want to be a good investor watching television or the pink papers or the personal finance magazines and websites may be not the best […]

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Risk to a great extent is counter-intutive! When the index was 3000 (circa 2002) I would meet bank Relationship Managers and IFAs (Independent Financial Analysts) who would tell me “Sir, I only sell debt funds. They are so secure, and you know last year gilt funds yielded 19% p.a!”. I would gently probe and say […]

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Financial analysts try to determine the value of a stock by calculating a company’s discounted “free cash flow”. This is based on a series of computer models with assumptions about future sales, earnings and growth rates. These models are only as good as the programmers and analysts that build them. What you end up with […]

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