One of my popular posts is “life insurance simplified” so I thought I will continue to use the same tag line for all my 101 lessons! The number of journalists I know is going up, and the questions I get from them is stunning. The latest – “If Hdfc bank pays 3% interest on a FD – how does it matter if I keep it for 7 days, 10 days or 14 days? If I keep Rs. 100,000 and take it out after 7 days, I will get Rs. 103,000 will I not?” I had to just simply tell him, “Sir, it is 3% PER ANNUM, and not an absolute figure”.

So if you do not understand SLR, CRR, Repo, ytm, current yield, plr, sub prime, pda, real rate, benchmark, rbi, sbi, reverse repo, basis point, g-sec, sgl, ocbs, nsdl, – if all these look like an alphabetic soup to you take heart. I will try to explain some of these words under this heading. Like I am doing a “mutual fund” tutorial, I also plan to do a “debt markets simplified”….so keep reading this space!