Yesterday, on 23rd Feb 2018 was the annual CafeMutual meet held at Sahara Star, Mumbai. As usual I reached at 9am and here is a summary of what happened…rather what I liked during the event!

The event was flagged off by Anita, and the first speaker was Sunil Subramaniam, CEO of Sundaram Mutual fund and he spoke about lessons from MS Dhoni. It always makes sense to talk cricket and films to an Indian audience. So picking MSD to learn management lessons was a brilliant idea, well conceptualized and well executed. He spoke about playing to your strengths, realizing that attitude was more important than talent, keeping cool, having strong convictions, taking charge, having a sense of humor. Kudos, well conceptualized and well executed.

The next speaker was Ashutosh Bishnoi, he spoke about irrationality and human behavior..and said how relationships can be built by using some irrational behavior patterns..like Investing is about the irrationality of postponing consumption to imagine a future, for a better tomorrow and security of the next generation, asking irrational questions like ‘do you know how much money you need to call yourself rich’ or ‘what will you never agree to do for ANY amount of money’ etc. It was nice to see some videos that Mahindra Mutual fund had made – normally such research is restricted to what we see on American websites!!

Maria Marsala spoke about dealing with change, and Anuradha Rao spoke about dealing with women clients. The number of women speaking at this event was high, and the next speaker was Radhika Gupta who spoke about how scams develop. In fact all scams (including BFSI rip offs) start as a good idea. Even term insurance and credit cards started off as good ideas till BFSI got greedy. Radhika spoke about 5 Cs of a scam! All scams have to be…

Creamy: They appeal to people’s greed

Bubbles are consistent. Anything that is consistent and gives consistent returns has tail winds.

Complex: Investors cannot figure out the reason behind a AA or a A rated paper.

Cocktailed: If there is a sign that it is too big to fail.

Cute: Examples are arbitrage funds taking credit risk.

Vishal Kapoor, CEO, Idfc Mutual fund spoke about an IDEAL adviser. This is a tough topic and could take a day! Considering that an ideal investor in Mumbai will find no takers in Nasik – as a paid RIA, and a good adviser in Nashik may not find takers in Pune. But Vishal decided to leave us with an IDEA!

Integrity: Integrity in thought, words, actions. The client should feel that adviser is working for me! I cannot agree more. My broker is a person with whom I first traded in 1979. We are still friends and not one transaction have I felt that he is doing it to earn a brokerage and the transaction is not good for me!

Disciplined: Be consistent. This is tough, but I would tweak this a little and say ‘be consistent and accept your failures’. That is more useful.

Empathy: Be sensitive to clients’ life style and life goals. However, sometimes do enough counselling to get them to change behavior.

Articulate: Effectively communicating the full picture in simple language. His example for this point will stay in my head, it was brilliant Vishal. Simple, but good example!

Learning: Keep enhancing your knowledge.

Vidya Bala spoke about fund evaluation parameters. She spoke about how Sebi’s fund rationalisation is likely to make ‘past comparisons’ difficult. She asked people to look at other parameters like market capitalization, concentration risk, upside capture and downside capture, portfolio turnover, duration, etc.

continued….tomorrow..