In an earlier post I had mentioned that 3 shares fell into a theme for me – good companies went into bad times (eps was down), realised its mistakes and took corrective action. The 3 shares were Essel Packaging, Cholamandalam Finance and Themis Medicare. I have no clue WHY, but Themis Medicare went up from […]

Read More →

There are a few people I know who keep chasing investment opportunities. There are some people who are good in one field – say sales, marketing, operations, dentistry, physiotherapy,….could be anything, so they think they are good in finance. Of course some of them visit websites, talk to people, read books and suddenly believe that […]

Read More →

In all my financial interactions – be it planning for clients, training, teaching or writing, people have come to me with some problem which they think is unique. In all the financial problems, I am able to find a pattern. Believe it or nor, people more often than not choose the problem by their behavior. […]

Read More →

While doing a risk review of a portfolio, I stumbled on a portfolio with 55 mutual fund schemes and 52 direct equity investments. When the investor asked me what was the risk, I said there was ‘concentration’ risk. I also told him he was running the risk of ‘over-diversification’ . He asked me to speak […]

Read More →

Along with a software company (www.myirisplus.com) I did financial planning workshops in various parts of the country. Delhi, Kolkatta, Indore, Hyderabad, Bengaluru (Bangalore), Pune, Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, Andheri, Churchgate, Chennai, Cochin, Trivandrum, Coimbatore, Ahmedabad, ….To be honest the response from the ‘IFA’ – the person who sells life insurance and mutual funds to you was […]

Read More →

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 […]

Read More →