For a successful relationship, it is important to nurture it with understanding, care, patience, prudence, and perseverance. If a sound approach is followed, just as wine (and whiskey), relationships can get better over time. This analogy applies to mutual fund investments as well. Investors, however, seem to undermine these values while approaching their mutual fund…

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has prescribed new norms to standardize and bring uniformity in the benchmarks of mutual fund schemes. SEBI has decided that certain categories of mutual funds will now follow a two-tiered structure for benchmarking of schemes. As per SEBI’s circular, the first-tier benchmark will reflect the category of…

With the spotlight on climate change and governance growing brighter, the ESG (Environment, Social and Governance) theme has picked up momentum globally. According to a Bloomberg note, ESG assets were in excess of USD 35 trillion globally in 2020. And by the end of 2025, the global AUM (Asset Under Management) of sustainable investing is…

The five-day-long Diwali festivities starts tomorrow (November 02) with Dhanteras, and many consider it to be an extremely auspicious day for new purchases, especially items made of gold and silver, or new household utensils made of steel, copper, brass, etc. Like most festivals in India, the significance of buying precious metal like gold during Dhanteras is linked with…

Over the past few years Credit Risk Funds have been making headlines for all the wrong reasons. It started with one of India’s leading infrastructure and Finance companies, IL&FS, defaulting on paying interest to its bond holders in September 2018. In the next 2-3 months, rating agencies downgraded the AAA rated debt instruments of IL&FS to D.…

After recording a stupendous rally in the past 18 months, the Nifty Small Cap 100 index reached its all-time high level of 11,677 on October 18, 2021. However, the small-cap segment has witnessed some consolidation in the past few days and is down by around 7% from its peak (as of October 28, 2021). We…

The S&P BSE Sensex has surpassed the 61,000 mark and the Nifty 50 index is trading above the 18,000 level. These large-cap indices have more than doubled since the March 2020 low, growing by around 135% in absolute terms (as of Oct 25, 2021). Since the beginning of 2021, the Sensex has gained 28%; the Nifty 50…

Information Technology has become the backbone of almost all economic and social activities, right from shopping to dining, schooling to working from home, banking to socializing, etc. All these task are performed conveniently today due to the advancements in technology. The pandemic circumstances coupled with increasing policy support has shown positive impact on the IT…

Over the last one year, bond yields in the U.S. have been rising steadily. Historically, rising bond yields in the U.S. has been negative for emerging markets. That’s because when bond yields in the U.S. rise, capital flows to emerging markets such as India, and consequently, either contract or flow back to the world’s largest…

In the past one and a half years or so, equity mutual fund investors have been through a roller coaster of emotions. As the equity market moved from multi-year lows in March 2020, to all-time high in the recent months, investor emotions too have sailed from extreme fear to euphoria. Equity market and emotions often go hand…