Real estate as an Investment…

I hope Dr. Khan finds this article useful…Arjuna seek your answers here: Many people have been screaming about real estate as an investment. Well I have nothing against it, except that I do not understand it. Given limited brain power, I would rather not do it, instead of making a mess of the same Let [...]

What is a bank’s role?

Recently when a kid wanted to borrow Rs. 20 lakhs, he went to a bank but got bad rates of interest. The documentation was painful, and the family was not sure whether it was the right thing to do. A rich uncle – actually his dad’s younger brother (kids chacha) offered the loan at exactly [...]

Media advise…

I watched 5 minutes on a channel that was discussing Financial Advisors. An interesting suggestion came up – one of the panelists said an advisor should get say 20% of the profits and about 10-15% of the losses in a clients portfolio. Brilliant advise. If you do not know what a portfolio manager does and [...]

Riskless portfolios…

I am not sure about the social media and investment advice, but am worried about the people who talk about risk in the media! Let us see some comments: 1. At this point if you are afraid of the markets you should shift to a RISKLESS portfolio of debt funds, FMP and bank deposits. Yuck, [...]

How safe are government securities?

Stupid question? Well let us attempt an answer first…then decide whether the question is stupid…. The full repayment of principal and interest is guaranteed by the government, so there is no way how you will get less than what you paid for. So in a way it is safe. However if you have a 8% [...]

How to invest in turbulent times…

this appeared last week in MoneyControl…. Investment in turbulent times! The market has gone nowhere in the past 4 years. When your financial planner / relationship manager / advisor told you that equities are for the long run he/she also said ‘long run’ means more than one year, correct? Well you invested when the index [...]