Posts tagged with "rbi"


  • Inflation Is Hurting The Stock Market

    Inflation is always bad news. This is nothing new anymore now is it? I have already written several posts about inflation in the recent past. Generally it affects your expenses, but when central banks decide to fix it, your investments also take a hit. Take the case of FED and US stock market. First the FED printed way too much money and the government handed free checks to everyone during COVID-19. At the time it seemed like a good idea. Later, when the FED wanted to stop printing, it could not because, well, socialist activities are hard to discontinue. Moreover the stock market would get spooked every time they even mentioned quantitative tightening, let alone interest rate hikes.

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  • The Curious Case Of Inflation

    RBI has finally increased the repo rate after inflation has been stubbornly high for more than three quarters. I was expecting this to have happened sooner, and yet they were faster than the US central bank. Inflation in the US has been out of control for a very long time now and yet the Fed has not taken any action. Their reasoning for the longest time has been that the inflation is transitory and will eventually come down without any rate action. Why is it transitory? The explanation was that the inflation was due to decrease in supply and not due to increase in demand and when the supply catches up with the demand the inflation should disappear. So far at least that was not the case and Fed has been printing money and keeping the interest rate low. What a mess.

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  • What Type Of An Investor Are You?

    Sensex is where it was some 7 months ago. We have escalating war on one side and growing inflation on the other side as no nation is immune to the ill effects of loose monetary policy and facing the after effects of stringent COVID restrictions. Sri Lanka is defaulting on its external debt. A nation default on its debt obligation is such a bad news. None of these are good signs and yet the stock market is happily moving forward. What should an investor to do in this situation? The answer may not be quite as exciting as one would think. It is quite boring and you probably already know what I am going to say. Just stay the course, follow your goals, maintain your asset allocation blah blah.

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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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  • 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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  • The Gilt Experiment

     You've probably heard about the inverse relationship between bond prices and interest rates. When interest rates rise, bond prices fall and vice-versa. How can we use this information to make some money without a lot of volatility? Read along about my experiment with interest rate cycles.

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