First of all let me make a distinction between a saver and an investor. A saver puts his money in instruments which give fixed or very closed to fixed kind of returns. Examples of this are bank fixed deposits, PPF, National savings certificates, Endowment insurance policies, Retirement plans fully in debt instruments, etc. etc. These […]

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Assuming a diary is a place where you will write down your darkest, best, …..an investment diary is a must. These 5 things MUST, MUST, MUST go into a diary if you really want to improve as a stock picker: a) log all ideas – history tells you which were good and which bad. A […]

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Hindu Business Line carried an article by Aarti by the same title. She starts by saying it is blasphemous to even ask this question. I agree that it is the way the media has ‘asked’ people to think. However, I belong to an old school of thought. It is easy to say ‘costs are everything’. […]

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  When I say banking, I mean banking, broking, mutual funds, insurance, software companies in the BFSI space. So let us revisit the laws: 1. Golden Rule of Life: He who has the gold makes the rules. If your name is Diamond, even better. 2. Salaries are NOT decided by demand and supply: It is […]

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In 2008, GE was desperately calling the US Finance secretary to say ‘we are about to default’ AiG was bailed out so that Goldman Sachs could be saved AiG was paying its traders (hold your breath 30% of Revenue) for bringing deals, mind you not a %age of profits, but gross revenue JP Morgan, Morgan […]

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  I have said this in the past too….and saying it again… “I have NO clue about what attracts big companies to the financial services sector” – repeat a zillion times. None of the so called ‘big groups’ have ever done well in financial services. Whether it is the Tatas, Birlas, Sundaram,….really only Hdfc as […]

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Now that the mutual fund industry is doing badly, we all need to do something to keep it alive. Why should it be kept alive? do not ask such stupid questions. We should keep it alive, so it should be kept alive. Here are a few suggestions: 1. Every stock broker should be forced to […]

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