Expense Account, Mint I like to talk about the efficacy of having equity in the portfolio because that is an asset class, I have been led to believe, which gives an inflation-plus return. But equity’s image as a super asset class beating the stuffing out of inflation has been under attack for a long time,...
Expense Account, Mint When one lives in a country of over a billion people, big numbers seldom come as a surprise. But when I looked at the number of Rs.1.5 trillion, I was astounded. That’s about 1.5% of the Indian gross domestic product, was the first thought. But the number in the excel sheet looked back...
Expense Account, Mint It is not often that one finds an existential question in a dry piece of financial sector regulation. But read the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) Investment Advisers Regulation 2013 (http://goo.gl/4b5RK) carefully and you find the question “who am I?” being asked of the financial intermediaries who face the retail...
Expense Account, Mint At the Financial Planning Standards Board’s annual congress last week in Mumbai, in which Mint was a media partner, the theme was consumer protection. Panellist Nilesh Shah of Axis Bank began his comments with this horse tale. In emperor Akbar’s stable there was a horse that preferred to eat grass over oats....
Expense Account, Mint We’ve shown a more mature cheek this time around when Norway did its we’ll-protect-your-kids number and accused the parents of a seven-year-old for trying to discipline him using physical punishment. The national hysteria is missing and the social media comment is more muted. At the risk of opening an unrelated debate, I...
Expense Account, Mint I’m between meetings and while away time at a Barista near IIT. The book I have open is less interesting than the conversation I shamelessly eavesdrop on. Didn’t have to try very hard as the two men who sat less than two feet away are locked up in a world of their...
Expense Account, Mint At some point I decided that to get a real flavour of what a mutual fund investor goes through, I need to stop using my agent and begin on my own. That was some time back, but the lessons from then still are sharp. And each time I facilitate somebody into using...
Expense Account, Mint Last week’s bailout of the ONGC stake sale by Life Insurance Corp. of India (LIC) has turned the spotlight on an institution that is a household name in India and now finds itself being publicly questioned over its investment decisions. Should you be worried about your money in government-owned LIC that was...
Expense Account, Mint We like to deal with money as a block and are loath to break it up into smaller bits that will do different things. The same pot of money can do a variety of things if put in different products, but we would rather take a neat decision of swinging the whole...
Expense Account, Mint When is a good time to invest?” This question comes in the league table of the top five questions around personal money decisions, the others being how much to invest, am I saving enough, what should I invest in and am I doing OK? Though it sounds generic, the question is about...