India is a land of Festivals. Traditionally India had been an agrarian society and had prospered immensely on agriculture. Prosperity brought celebration in our lives along with responsibility. Sense of responsibility towards our fellow beings in the society including non-humans reflects in our festivals and in our rituals.   One such festival that evokes responsibility among Indians and especially Hindus is “Raksha Bandhan”. In its most popular interpretation – on this day brothers reassure and promise to protect all interests of their sisters and against all evils in their sister’s lives. On this Raksha Bandhan, let this promise be not restricted to some gifts and a promise to protect them physically but expand its scope, both in terms of relation and scope of protection. This year include all those people who are dependent on you and provide them your umbrella of protection. They could be your parents, your siblings, children, life partner, employees and any other. Scope of ...

  " A market is the combined behavior of thousands of people responding to information, misinformation, and whim. " - Kenneth Chang Every coin has two sides and we can’t see both the sides at the same time. Similar is the interpretation of news, information or data. Like, over past three months FIIs have pumped in more than 1.4 lakh crores into Indian stock markets which helped Largecap indices gain over 15%. This is one side of the story. Last week same FIIs withdrew around 10,000 crores from Indian stock markets due to rising bond yields in USA. Indian stock markets also fell by around 5% before showing recovery on Friday and now at the time of writing this blog. – This is another side of the story. We have seen inflation data that has very much been within the tolerance range of RBI. But for almost a month food inflation is on the rise especially of fruits and vegetables. You must have been receiving a lot of memes around tomatoes. Same dilemma – how do you interpret suc...

  The Stock Market is the device to transfer wealth from the IMPATIENT to the PATIENT. After swinging in a range for almost one and half years, markets breached their previous peaks and are scaling new one now. Markets have risen by almost over 14% in last three months. Major reason for this sudden rise is the return of FIIs to the Indian stock markets following the fact that India is the fastest growing economy and growing over 6% despite covid, global economic slowdown and geo-political tensions. We invest for long term and everyone knows in the long run markets will go up irrespective of intermittent shocks like scams, dot-com bubble, Lehman crisis, covid or banking troubles in USA etc. Following picture depict the journey of Sensex over 40 years since its inception.   Source; www.thenwsmen.co.in The unfortunate part is we are more concerned about the short term movements of the markets. Every time there is sudden rise or fall in them market we are gripped more by f...

  “It’s important to learn what you need to know But it’s more important to learn what you don’t need to know.”   Stock markets absorbs all type of information be it political, social or economical. Many people were expecting markets to react differently following an impressive win of Congress party in Karnataka’s state assembly elections assuming it to be a mandate against the central government’s policies.   On the other side there have been so many positive news coming from economy, latest being consumer inflation at 4.7 in April apart from good corporate results, increasing manufacturing activities, capacity utilization, energy consumption,  GST collection, impressive growth in vehicles sale etc.   Post covid FIIs poured in handsome amount into Indian equities till around March 2021 that resulted in the phenomenal Bull Run before turning cautious and then negative from October 2021 on Indian markets. They remained negative till June 2022 and sinc...

March-April is an amazing period when followers of the three prominent religions across the world observe fast as religious obeisance. While Hindus celebrate Chaitra Navratri, Muslims observe Ramadan & Christians observe the Lent. Chaitra Navratri signifies the creation of the universe and the beginning of the world and beings by the Goddess Durga or the Adi Shakti. Chaitra means new or bright. The first day of the Chaitra month marks the beginning of the new year as per Hindu calendar. Followers observe fast for nine days and worship nine different forms or incarnations of Goddess Durga during this period. Ramadan is the month when teachings of the Holy Quran were revealed to Prophet Muhammed by the Allah. Ramadan is derived from Arabic word ‘Ramdh’ which means intensely hot or burning. Worship and devotion during this month burns away the traces of the sin and produces the necessary warmth of the love in man for his creator and fellow beings. Lent is the period of 40 days w...

  "The market does not trade upon what everybody knows, but upon what those with the best information can foresee" – William Hamilton Bank Collapse in USA - After the Adani saga it was the turn of some sensational news from so called robust but deteriorating financial system of USA. Collapse of Silicon Valley & other banks in USA are just the cases of cash flow mismatch and investment calls going wrong. By now you must have read enough on this. Still should you wish to understand what this story is all about, you may call your InvestmentMitra for the same. Thankfully SVB hadn’t financed any of the ventures from Adani group, otherwise pessimists would have declared doomsday for India as well. Adani Saga - Good part about Adani’s saga is that Adani as a group has interest across diversified industries and geographies. It has created a good mix of domestic and international debt. Adani group’s businesses are real. The promoters have prepaid a good amount of debt maturi...

  "We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid" – Benjamin Franklin We are just a month away from closing of this financial year. There are a host of changes that have to be done by March 31, 2023; failure to comply with these norms will cause disruption in your investments. Let us look at these changes that can impact your investments:   Aadhaar-Pan linking It is important to link Aadhaar and PAN as early as possible. The last date to link the two is March 31, 2023. In case you fail to link your Aadhaar with your PAN before 31 st March 2023, your PAN will become inoperative. And wherever your PAN is quoted, all such investments may also become inoperative. So double check if your PAN is linked with your Aadhaar. As per Department of Revenue Notification no 37/2017 dated 11th May 2017, following categories are exempted from Aadhaar-PAN linking (i) NRIs (ii) Not a citizen of India (iii) Age > 80 years or above as on date (iv) State of resi...

  "Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment" - Benjamin Franklin Budget is just ten days away. This will be the last budget before parliament goes into election next year. And as usual there are a lot of expectations as well as speculations about the budget. Looking at the past track record of this government and present world economic situation, we expect this budget to be a budget exploiting the opportunities, providing fiscal accommodation to attract investments into manufacturing and also increase productivity in agriculture sector with some tax concessions. Directly or indirectly this budget should influence employment and spending at lower level. Russia Ukraine war has been running for almost a year now. And all supply socks it caused are factored in to a good extent. Winters in Europe will be over in another one and half months. Post that demand for energy in Eu...

  "I never attempt to make money on the stock market. I buy on the assumption that they could close the market the next day and not reopen it for five years." – Warren Buffett   RBI continued the momentum it started in May 2022 and raised its repo rates by another 50 basis points to 5.9%. Prior to RBI, US federal bank had increased its policy rates to 3.25%. Since March it has increased its policy rates by 3% while RBI raised by 1.9% during the same period.   Usually the primary reason for raising repo rates is to control inflation by reducing money supply in the economy . Inflation that had remained below 2% for almost over a decade in USA, suddenly started rising in 2021 and reached 9.1 in early 2022. For India also inflation reached 7.79 in April 2022 before offering some relief. For August it was 7% for India whereas US recorded 8.3%. For UK and other developed economies this figure is more disturbing.   For many countries other than US, another worry...

“ Small Drops Make an Ocean .” The popular proverb looks good for motivation than anywhere close to be a reality to most people. Let me share an open secret with you - equity markets have power to prove this proverb not only to be true but a powerful tool to create wealth. Yes, by investing small amounts (drops of your savings) regularly in stock markets through SIPs in mutual funds, you can make an ocean of wealth. The only condition is that you need to be patient & regular.   We analysed SIP performance of all the mutual fund schemes that were available for a period of 15 years, 20 years and 25 years. Let us know what the results are. We have considered only regular plans and actively managed funds for the analysis. We have not considered any ETF, FOF, sectoral or thematic funds. We have considered investing Rs. 1,000/- per month in each individual scheme to calculate the real values. And we have sourced this data from www.advisorkhoj.com   15 Years SIP Returns ...