It is funny how many people want to get returns far (the operating word is far) greater than the index! Over a 54 year period my father has got a return greater than 14% p.a. in Hindalco. This is not good, it is great. The two important things are ‘r’ the rate of return and […]

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Frankly I do not have an answer…but let us see what can happen. Lots of people who have made money on the up ride from 9k to 20k whom I know are happy to sit on cash earning 10 to 10.5% p.a. interest. See the IDBI bank ad – it is screaming a rack rate […]

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Many good fund managers are beating the Sensex and the Nifty by a long margin. I am also seeing many individuals (yes the kind of people I meet is skewed) beating the index, and many times by a big margin. This is also because when I see my own portfolio (or my families portfolio) there […]

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I had done the following post in the 1st week of June, 2006. Except for the numbers, the story is just as fine. It originally appeared in the Personal finance section of moneycontrol.com Okay, so the market fell 1,100 points on 22 May 2006, it fell 350 points on 31 May 2006 and another 327 […]

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I had done this piece for rediff in 2006. It is relevant today also 🙂 read on… The most important animal in the markets is the pig. It gets slaughtered whether the bulls have a party or the bears have a party. That pig is your lay investor. I am not a doomsday specialist or […]

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One professor of a college wrote into a leading personal finance magazine: “I do not agree with you…Equity is not a great investment. The Sensex started in 1978 at a base of 100 and in 2007 reached 20,700. This means 207%. Now this means it has given a CAGR (think compounding!) of 6.9%. We could […]

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When the index is doing well….we all buy into the optimism. It may actually be a great time to review your portfolio and SELL the duds and perhaps be in an index ETF. This is a tactical strategy of getting away from the high Beta stocks to safer territory – if the market goes up, […]

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