Posts in category "financial-planning" - page 6
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Stock Market Is Down, I Mean Up
Just three days ago I was planning to write a post on how Sensex dropped 1190 points. In fact it went down as much as 1879 points at the lowest point in the day. But then I thought, what is the point of writing the post. It will be back up again the next day. Which is precisely what happened for the next 3 days. The stock market was moving up without a break. This has been pretty much how things were for the past several months now. One or two days the market might fall on some random news. Then it will continue on its upwards march for several days. There is absolutely no need to worry about any fall it seems.
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Random News On HNIs and Cryptocurrencies Bill
I have been accumulating some random news that I found interesting over the past few weeks. So thought I’d share my views on them. On the one hand, Indian government is coming up with a bill that may ban or regulate cryptocurrencies and on the other hand we have a major bank announcing that they are embracing cryptocurrencies. Both of these happened on the same day! What contrasting news. Then, one news article mentions very HNIs are not investing much in mutual funds while another one mentions a lot of interest in equities from them. That is not very contrasting because one mentions mutual funds, and the other direct equities, but still it is interesting.
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Fate Of Cryptocurrencies In India
Everyone must have heard the news by now. The Indian government will bring in the Cryptocurrency and Regulation of Official Digital Currency Bill, 2021, in the Winter Session of Parliament starting November 29. What is the big deal? It seems that the Bill will ban most of the private cryptocurrencies except a few. A lot of details about the Bill are not known. Yet people like to speculate. It is absurdly silly to talk about something when there is nothing to go by, but why should I be left behind? Let me throw in my proverbial 2 cents as well.
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Financial Planning Workshop
I have recently done something that I haven’t done in the longest time – teach someone :). The last I remember teaching was way back in college and before that in 11th standard. And each time I had to teach an audience, it was because someone put me in the spot and not because of my own interest. In 11th is was because I was not paying attention to the class and when asked why I was not paying attention, I would give rude answers like “I already know it, I don’t want to listen”. I was sort of a rebel and generally a difficult student to teach. I guess may be the teachers wanted to show me how difficult it was to teach and asked me to solve some problems on the board and explain it to the class.
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Should I Invest in Retail Direct Scheme
The minute I read about RBI launching retail direct scheme to allow retail investors to invest directly in the government bonds, I got excited. I have a huge portion of my investments in G-Sec (government securities) via various mutual funds. If there is a way I can invest directly with RBI, side stepping mutual funds, I could save on some expenses (expense ratio). Sounds good in theory, but will it work? Here are some of my initial thoughts on the scheme as applicable to me.
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Laptop Price Inflation
Last time I did a review of my electricity bill inflation. Conveniently I was tracking the utility bills since 2012 so I had enough data. That got me thinking. May be I can find other expenses for which I have long enough data to calculate inflation. Remember, inflation is different for different products. For example, your food inflation will be different from your medical bill inflation, or electricity bill inflation etc. So you will need to find the inflation for each category of expenses. Since I recently purchased a laptop, I thought if I can dig up some old bills, may be I can calculate my laptop expenses inflation. Which is exactly what this post is all about.
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Tactical Asset Allocation vs Fixed Allocation
If you have been reading my blog for some time you probably already know that my asset allocation changes based on market conditions. I have my own set of rules using which I decide whether to be equity heavy or debt heavy. Of course there is no secret sauce involved you can do the same with data available on the internet. My question however is whether it is worth doing tactical allocation or is it just better to follow a fixed asset allocation plan. That is what I set out to find and here are my findings.
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Sensex Touched 60,000. What Should I Do Now?
I never imagined that BSE Sensex (Bombay Stock Exchange Sensitive Index) would touch 60,000 so soon! Especially given the uncertainty due to COVID-19 pandemic. It took just 8 months to go from 50,000 to 60,000. Which is a 20% gain in that short duration. We have all heard of stock markets giving great returns, but this one is special because it is happening at a time when economic situation isn’t that great and we are still fighting a virus without cure. Oh well. Markets will do what they do best – surprise everyone. So what should an investor do in such a situation? My response may not give the answers you are looking for, but that doesn’t stop me from writing now will it?
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Be Smart Or Not Be Stupid?
It is amazing how many people focus on being smart than avoiding stupidity. One could be the smartest person in town, but if they keeping making silly mistakes, eventually the mistakes pile up enough to waste a smart decision. This is even more true in investing. I am one of those people trying to be smart instead of avoiding mistakes. This reminds me of an article I read a long time ago about the findings of a scientist and statistician Simon Ramo.
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Improving Returns On Investment
A few days ago I wrote a post on how to start on a simple investment plan. The reason I wrote that post is to help you get started because it is easier to start on a simple plan. The more complex a plan, the more we procrastinate. But what if you have already started on your investment journey and want to improve the returns? Continuing from where we left off with the simple investment plan, here are some things you can do to improve returns.
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