No health deteriorates overnight. Sure we have heard of cancer, liver and kidney failure – but there are always some signals. Ignore them, and you are dead. Literally. Similarly are there some signals that you can pick up from a business that pre warn you about failure? Well here a few that I remember from […]

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From all my posts if you have come to the conclusion that I am against PSU companies, you may not be very wrong. Are the employees in these companies to be blamed for their plight? Yes and No. I have known extremely committed and well meaning PSU employees. I used to know a person in […]

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Many of my posts have been saying why one should not buy LiC policies, let me tell you the exact / specific reasons why, and I have these views for the past umpteen years, even pre 2001, when you had NO CHOICE: 1) LiC policies like classic endowment are opaque (this is actually true for […]

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On the one hand I keep cribbing about the high cost of financial services, on the other hand I meet kids, young people and people over 45 who are constantly being sacked. The sackings have not been done nicely too. It is much easier for the top management to sack ‘200 Feet on the Street’ […]

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If I do a quick analysis of my portfolio, I have made money largely from companies very high on compliance. The groups are Tata, Murugappa, Sundaram, Birla, Hdfc, Multinational companies. Not sure whether clubbing Multinational companies in one group makes sense – largely it is the American companies which have shared their prosperity with their […]

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Last week I met with a very senior person in a very very big bank. It took almost 10 minutes of security check before I reached him. As usual I asked him “How come your bank which has such a high training budget not spend any money on teaching personal finance to YOUR OWN EMPLOYEES?” […]

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When we made research reports in the 1990s, we used to have one page on risk factors. One of the risks was ‘Regulatory Risk’ – never bothered about it much.. Now if you are the promoter of a life insurance company, your purse will know what is regulatory risk. Thanks to IRDA’s diktat, all life […]

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