Smart Investing..

Factors which can lead the Rupee appreciation ·         Base rate effect to kick in  and the inflation numbers will go down and will be very much within the magic figure of 6 ·          Reversal in interest rate cycle ·          Increase in corporate confidence & profitability ·         FII money flows into the country ·         Hike in NRI deposit rates will also help in money flowing into the country due to arbitrage opportunity ·         Allowing Qualified Foreign Investors (QFI) to invest directly will allow money to move into the country. ·         US economy showing sign of improvement to help local market sentiments. This will again be positive to move in money to India. All these factors can lead the Rupee to appreciate and move away from 53 to below 50. Factors which can hinder the Rupee...

A QFI (Qualified Foreign Investor) is a KYC-compliant foreign investor who is a  resident in a country complaint with FATF (  financial action task force)  standards, a signatory to the International Organisation of Securities Commission's multilateral memorandum of understanding. QFIs should not be resident in India or registered with Sebi as a foreign institutional investor or sub-account.  This is a very good news for the markets as well as to the QFI. First advantage is a QFI doesn't have to worry about all the paper work & compliance in opening an  account with an FII and then investing in the Indian market. Going forward a QFI will only need to open a  DP account and a bank account and can use the advisor/broker to help in executing transactions. (More details on the process is still awaited). Secondly the limits on how much maximum amount a FII and a group of QFI can invest into a company has been inc...

Hi It’s very important for any investor to make an investment policy statement (IPS) before he starts serious investing. This statement is basically a gist of the all the important things one need to know and take care while investing. It not only covers ones analysis of need, goals etc, but is an important document which tells you what to and what not to expect when you are investing or are already invested. IPS also encourages you to see all of your family’s investments as a single portfolio and also can rid you of the worry about how to invest that bonus check or ESOP money that just came in . It also aligns what you and you advisor expect from your investment portfolio. Though you can make the IPS on your own, still I would say use any advisor like us for a detailed planning, aligning, understanding & tracking. It’s like when you are not keeping well, you can choose whether to go for self-medication or to pay small fees and use the services of a doctor. Anyway the below a...

Genuine asset re-balance from the swelled portion (profit made) of the asset to debt periodically based on individuals risk profile adds value to the overall portfolio. Lot of people avoid doing re balance stating the requirement to pay short term capital gains or they would state a smaller return. Re-balancing should be the priority in the Investment Portfolio and if done periodically adds value to your portfolio. I found this article pretty interesting. This will add value to our thinking and investments. Read on... Rebalance investments to avoid bad times

Though it doesn't seems to have given the equity returns but yeah it does fit in the alternate investments profile. The Quillan Collection was sold at Sotheby’s for $8.9m. Interesting Read. click to read on. Photography Funds Show Returns :

In terms of alternative assets art, wine and gold are most preferred. Investors need to understand these investment vehicles and select products very carefully. Read on... Investing in art, wine and other tangible assets

Investec had come up with a view to buy commodity shares in future as the profits of companies dealing in commodities, due to high prices will only be  realized  in future. I second this, I think we need to be in commodities fund especially of those companies investing in big mining companies worldwide. There is always a time lag / interaction between the commodity price movement and the stock price movement of similar commodity companies. This is the time, when ideally we need to buy in the stock. Lets see, will check and post in few days which fund can add value. Checkout the below link for more details.  FUNDVIEW-Time to get active in commodities -Investec | Reuters

Interesting view by credit suisse. Expecting Jan IIP @ 3% and 2012 GDP below 8%. Credit Suisse view: India IIP numbers are 'bizarrely' weak - CNBC-TV18 -

Edition 1 - Power shift: The move from West to East - 21st Century Investment Themes - Fidelity At a glance: We are moving from a world with one dominant power to a world with several The dollar's status as international reserve currency is vulnerable Increased interdependence will mean greater international co-operation Emerging market consumption will be a key driver of future global growth BRICs are united in vision, divided in practice Investors could position their portfolios to benefit from the power shift to the East

Last week the cabinet approved the Direct Tax Code bill and forwarded it to the parliament for approval. This is a good sign of the changes happening in the modern India. The Income tax act which we follow today is more than 50 years old. The objective is to widen the tax base and make the tax law much simpler & more effective. These are some of the salient feature's of the DTC for Resident & NRI Investors. Tax slabs to be changed Slab 1: Upto INR 200000 the tax rate is NIL. ( Present Slab 1 is upto INR1.65 lacs @ NIL) Slab 2:  INR 200,001 to INR 500,000 the tax rate is 10% ( Present slab 2 is INR 1.65 to 5 @ 10%). Slab 3:  INR 500,001 to INR 1,000,000 the tax rate is 20% (Present Slab 3 is INR 5 to 8 @ 20%). Slab 4:  INR 1,000,001 and above the tax rate is 30% ( Present Slab 4 is INR 8 & above @ 30%).             In the case of a resident individual of the age of 65 years or above, the basic exemption...

SEBI (Securities Exchange Board of India) banned the entry load on Mutual funds few months back which has now created a whole new dimension for investment management. I call it "U Manage U Reap" dimension. Today as an investor if you know the very basic of financial planning and  if you can make a decent plan for yourself  then the whole investment process can be managed online and that to for no fee (or very very less fee). There are websites through which you can go and invest your money like the websites of Asset management companies and there are also sites through which you can keep track of your investments like moneycontrol, yahoo finance, karvymfs etc and to top it up you also have websites through which you can request your statement of investments like karvymfs.com which gives you consolidated fund statements from Karvymfs + Cams+ FTAMIL all for free. Ok its true that it might not give you statements from all the  mutual funds availab...

Its after long that I restarted work on the blog. I have pasted the tax rules for the financial year 2010. I have received it from principal mutual fund.

You can check out the status of the recently issued IPOs like Adani Power and NHPC by clicking at the following link http://www.karvy.com/ipoStatus

National Hydroelectric Power Corporation ( NHPC ) IPO will be open for subscription today and is one of the most awaited IPOs in recent days. NHPC operates mainly in North and North-Eastern states and This miniratna is expected to get orders from countries like Bhutan and Nepal. This is a first PSU IPO after 17 months (REC is the last IPO – February, 2008). Indian government will get Rs. 2,000 crore by divesting its 5% stake in NHPC while company will get around 4,000 crore from this IPO. NHPC had earlier filled a draft red herring prospectus in April 2007, but it was turned down by market regulator Sebi, as the company did not have the required strength of independent directors on its board then. Later, the company again filed the IPO papers on August 6, 2008, but scrapped the plan due to poor market conditions. The real story behind the NHPC IPO is one about expansion and growth. NHPC is currently engaged in the construction of 11 hydroelectric project s, which will increase ...

The IPO of Adani Power , promoted by the owners of Mundra Port & SEZ, opens today on June 28 and plans to mop up to Rs 3,016 crore from the primary market. This is the second biggest in country's history after Reliance Power. Basic Details of the IPO: Books Open 28th July 2009, Tuesday Books Close 31st July 2009, Friday Price Band Rs.90 - Rs.100. Lot Size 65 x multiples of 65 Equity Shares Issue Size Primary offering of 301,652,031Equity shares (~13.8% of post issue capital) Employee Reservation 8,000,000 Equity Shares Net Issue Size 293,652,031 Equity Shares (~13.5% of post issue capital) QIB Book 60% of the Net issue size - at least 176,191,219 shares Retail Book 30% of Net issue size - not less than 88,095,609 shares HNI Book 10% of Net issue size - not less than 29,365,203 shares Book Running lead managers DSP ML, JM Financial, Enam, IDFC SSKI, Kotak, Morgan Stanley, I-Sec, SBI Caps The rough date of listing is around August 20 th 2009. As I write this blog artic...

Hi The entry load on mutual fund has been abolished by SEBI from August 1 2009. Its a double edged sword for lot of investors as the good part is that no entry load will be charged and the whole amount will be invested but the negative part to the whole story is hardly there will be any company who will give advice to retail customers. We can argue here by saying that advice is not required as anybody can decide on which funds to buy or sell. Though its not true because I remember a wealth managament company who during the last bull run, when market valuations were getting stretched had asked their clients to come out in a staggered way from equity MFs. Those clients who agreed to go with the companies advice had very less loss compared to those who stayed put thinking market will cross 25 K on Sensex. Similarly there are clients who take lot of new age allocations like gold and infra and make a mixture of various MFs and think that they have done something great. They realise the fail...

I t might seem ridiculous to talk about safe investments and sound returns at a time when the equity markets are down 34 per cent + since last year and a tumbling real estate market is giving most of us sleepless nights. One thing that the glum developments of the last 18 months have taught us is that when things go wrong, it's time to go back to the basics. When everything around us is crashing, the only comfort is in the simple and staid; like listening to an old song, or eating your mother's cooking. For our money lives, this new reality of volatile markets indicates the need to go back to old options and invest in products that our parents relied on, the ones we turned our noses up at as too cumbersome, or even too boring. These options, debt products with fixed returns mostly sold through post offices, are the safest possible as the government guarantees them. Read More here Source www.business.rediff.com 

Indian stocks may extend their “impressive run,” helping the Bombay Stock Exchange Sensitive Index climb to 15,000 by June 2010, Macquarie Group Ltd. said. The economy may “bottom out” in the second half of 2009, aided by the government’s fiscal and monetary policies, Macquarie analysts led by Seshadri Sen wrote in a report today. Read more of the articles here: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601091&sid=ahsyvlFT6ifA&refer=india Source: Bloomberg.com

In continuation to my post   Real Estate Prices in India face slowdown   I happened to read the below public notice in todays (May 07, 2009) Times of India Bangalore Edition, page 20.  This is also available in their online newspaper edition called e paper( I am not able to put the link here) but go to  http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Client.asp?Daily=TOIBG&showST=true&login=default&Enter=true&Skin=TOINEW&GZ=T  and check out for page 20.  I dont know how true  it is that DLF tried selling the residential property in bangalore without approval as claimed in the notice, but one thing is for sure if it is right then its one of the worst things to happen to DLF and to the real estate markets.  Real Estate Trends 2009: Pretty sad to see the state of affairs in Real Estate companies. In fact if you read my earlier post on real estate you will find that the actual correction should have been close to 30% in various markets. I still feel there is lot of room for real...

T he New Pension Scheme (NPS) has been launched on ‘Labour Day’ on Friday for all the citizens. This followed the confirmation by the National Interim Pension R egulator of the scheduled launch of the Mega Pension Plan from Friday. This scheme will be for for employees of private sector, self employed and extended it to everyone in the country. The Pension Fund Regulatory Development Authority ( PFRDA ) has decided to bring in some changes in the new pension scheme with effect from May 1, 2009.   The   new pension scheme(NPS)   will allow the fund investment of nearly 50% in the high risk stock markets. Six major fund managers were shortlisted for the   new pension scheme   in the month of February. They include Reliance Capital,ICICI Prudential Life Insurance,State Bank of India,Kotak Mahindra Bank,UTI,IDFC. An expert panel was formed under the guidance of HDFC chairman Deepak Parekh to look into the matters of   new pension scheme . The   PFRDA   has made a strict limit of inve...