Recently a friend passed on an article by Ajit Dayal – Evolution of the barber – or something like that. To summarise the article Ajit had said when he was young he went to a barber he said “chop it off” and the job was done. However today the barber tries to sell you gel, […]
A few days ago I was watching a personal finance program on ET TV. How some statements are now being thrown about is very surprising – and amusing if one were not bothered about the side effects. A portfolio for a 55 year old individual (5 years to go for retirement) was about 50% in […]
If you are old enough to remember what is LBO it means you were born in the 1950s or 60s! LBO is a short form of Leveraged By Out. Here a set of employees would get together and decide to buy out the shareholders. Then they would take the company public and make their $ […]
In such a volatile market the small investor needs protection. I can safely start a speech with this statement immaterial of the forum at which I am speaking. I will get a lot of applauses for this universally true statement. Let us now see what it means. One it is a Mother Hood statement and […]
Many people close to retirement and some people in retirement are calling up – and their portfolios suck! Portfolios have the classic mistake of either being too aggressive or being too defensive with a lot of long term debt. In most cases I find a slew of mutual funds – opportunities funds, foreign investments, small […]
Funnily I do not get paid for the best investment advice that I have ever given! Let me enumerate some of the client questions which have been addressed in the negative. For a few of my clients the best investments are those that they did not make – but they do not know the value […]
A couple of weeks back I had written a post about how the slow down will hurt some industries. Fairly clearly those companies (industries) which have a high cash burn ratio – and who cannot reduce fixed costs will bleed first. Financial services industry – life insurance, broking retail, general retail – are all vulnerable. […]