Risk in mutual fund investing comes from: a) not knowing what you are buying b) not understanding standard deviation of the instrument c) not understanding that the past performance is completely useless for knowing what will happen in the future. Let us take just one ‘type’ of fund: The Gilt Fund. All asset management companies […]
Let us start at the beginning….what is Libertarian Paternalism? Well it is a subtle way of making people towards rational choices. For example when a person joins for employment the employment form includes an AUTO sign up for an index fund. Say NPS to the extent of 3% of basic salary. The employer also contributes […]
There are many people who come to sell equity schemes…and here is the language they use: 1. Sir ‘Equities have given 20% CAGR in India from 1979 till today including dividends’ – so if you invest in equities for 5 years you will get the same kind of returns. Explanation: Equity returns have […]
The financial services industry is supposedly well regulated. What with Rbi, Sebi, Irda, …the alphabet soup in place, does it help the retail investor. Sorry, is it supposed to help the retail investor? These are the regulators, what happens with the so called ‘shareholders appointed auditor’? Let us take the case of mutual funds. Most […]
a hypothetical letter to my hypothetical client. Any similarity to something like this already written by somebody is a sheer accident. Hello Mr. Client, Sebi has vide its circular said I have to tell you all the earnings that I have from your account. I wish they had said that mutual fund houses should […]
This post was triggered by Deepak Shenoy’s article about the regulator… I was a little amused that the cases mentioned even got ‘caught’ . First things first. What is a soft dollar commission or should i say soft rupee commission… I will have to go a little into technical details, so please bear with me. […]
There is a provision to increase the expenses that the ‘aam aadmi’ will pay for the services of an asset management company…so welcome to the party. I mean the party that the AMCs will now start having. What are my objections to the new provisions? Frankly, I have no strong opinion on what the […]