One Million Content Hits, Thank You

Posted on December 15, 2011 by Ranjan

Just noticed that my website crossed 1000000 content view hits. Thanks for reading. The site has content on 347 topics and growing.

1 Million!

The statistics are on the right sidebar, near the bottom of the website, if you are interested.

More importantly, thanks for your emails and calls that encourage me to share more and more information.

Thanks.

Coming Soon! RupeeCamp "Financial Planning Workshop". "Join us"

Welcome back! Join me on this journey to improving our financial IQ and sharing what we know. Updates at RSS feed or Email. And spread the word please Thank You!

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Free or Fee Financial Advice: Wikipaisa wants your Opinion

Posted on November 29, 2011 by Ranjan

Wikipaisa is an initiative that aims at spreading awareness about the importance of differentiating between a financial advisor and a financial product salesman/distributor. Here’s a video where Deven explores the question, Free or Fee!

Free or Fee, a WikiPaisa conversation from WikiPaisa on Vimeo.

Do share your thoughts at Wikipaisa

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Which Portfolio Manager to Choose?

Posted on February 11, 2011 by Ranjan

K Ramalingam has a detailed post on Portfolio Management System and how to choose your Portfolio Manager on my website.

While it gives the framework for taking a decision on choosing PMS, it would be a difficult exercise to compare PMS service on their expenses and the kind of returns they generate.

My guestimate is that there would be more than 250 PMS providers in India and finding the list and going to their websites for collating information on expenses and returns would be a daunting exercise.

There are some experiences that have been shared on a previous post on PMS and those are individual experiences. I don’t think it’s a good idea to generalize those experiences.

Another perspective (and this is mine), is that so much information and data doesn’t really help. More important than the returns (which can be seasonal) and expenses (nothing wrong in charging for real professional advice), it is the evaluation of the investment expertise of the PMS provider that is important. You need to be able to trust your PMS provider on the basis of his investing skills.

So if we can come back to the question of which PMS provider to choose, which one would I choose?

My answer is PPFAS. Their Portfolio Management Scheme (Cognito) was started in October 1996 and is a SEBI registered Discretionary Portfolio Management Scheme which provides a service that is best suited to the investor’s own special needs. Client’s expectations and risk perspectives are understood over pre-signing meetings. An ideal balance between equity and fixed income investments is arrived at with mutual consent. Sounds interesting? You can evaluate the mandated disclosures here which gives details of the returns generated and the fee they charge

And Rohit Chauhan, who may not be a SEBI registered PMS provider but he has a really transparent blog where he gives out a lot of ideas. He’s starting a paid subscription service soon and he charges peanuts!

Will you like to share your experiences and recommendations? Thanks.

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The Business of Personal Finance in India

Posted on February 3, 2011 by Ranjan

Two personal finance businesses (Rupeetalk and iTrust) were acquired recently. Rupeetalk story, iTrust story on Medianama. This prompted me to go back to my post dated Sept. 21, 2009 which reviewed three businesses. Excerpts:

There are three personal finance portals that has caught my attention. They are InvestmentYogi, iTrust and RupeeTalk.

Overview:
Both RupeeTalk and iTrust provide articles, comparison table on financial products and have tied up with leading financial product companies to sell their products. They appear to be the online channels of the financial majors.

InvestmentYogi has content focused on helping individuals on financial planning, retirement planning and tax planning. It doesn’t sell any financial products but focuses on helping you to learn, share and grow.

To me, they [Rupeetalk and iTrust] are just another addition to the 3 million strong financial advisors community with a unique online presence.

InvestmentYogi has the most disruptive business model, to my mind.

The articles are written in a very unbiased manner and they do not push any products. Their goal is to promote a holistic financial planning approach to investing and managing wealth.

InvestmentYogi is still hanging on and I believe they will win in the long run.

To my mind, personal finance is not just about having access to unbiased and useful information, but it is also about being aware/improving our financial behavior and taking concrete action steps to improve personal finances.

Having said that, competition and active regulation has changed a lot of rules in the past few years. The rules of financial services are seeing a lot of disruptions. Examples of no entry load on Mutual Funds and the recommendations of the D Swarup Committee on doing away with commissions come to mind. Mutual Funds being available on the NSE wef 30th November, 2009 and conceptualization of fee based advisors (CPFAs) are more examples.

There is a unique opportunity to bring in personal financial services in tune with these changing times.

But it ain’t easy to enable behavioral change and persuade people to manage their finances in a better way!

What do you say?

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MoneyLife Study on the Stocks of the Decade

Posted on January 4, 2011 by Ranjan

Moneylife has a report on the top wealth creating stocks of the decade (2001-2010)

In the same release, they talk about the lessons we can derive from a 10-year study such as this one, they would be:

• Take a lot of common ideas about wealth creation with a pinch of salt.(Emphasis mine) For one, higher GDP growth does not translate into high returns from stocks you own. Conversely, even when GDP growth is low, some sectors and stocks will do very well. Two, popular and well-performing companies may deliver average to poor returns. Their future growth may already be reflected in the stock price.
• Smaller companies offer better potential for returns, but carry substantial risk.
• The single most important factor that determines stock returns is the starting price. You just have to be patient and buy cheap.
• Following the above-mentioned point, buying unloved and beaten down stocks and sectors could be one way to catch hold of the next Unitech or Sesa Goa.
• Having done that, remember that the bulk of stock returns comes only in bursts-much of the gains in stocks today were captured during the bull market of 2003-07.

Valid points all. But it is important to remember that it’s all in hindsight. Can anyone predict correctly the top stocks of the next decade please?

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Top 10 Personal Finance Resources in India

Posted on December 27, 2010 by Ranjan

Betting on the huge population of young Indians and their need to manage money, there has been exciting developments in the personal finance vertical. The online world has responded with some awesome products and services in this area and I list the ten best resources that I have come across.

The list is in no particular order.

1. PPFAS: I am a big fan of Parag Parikh and regard him as India’s best brain on investing. His books are a must read. Their site has a section devoted to behavioural finance and they have a wide range of products and services to offer.

2. Paisa: Built by possibly the best tech team in India, the user experience of the site is awesome.

3. InvestmentYogi: They have built an online financial planning engine and useful tax filing application.

4. TaxMunshi: A tax software that impressed me. They have plans for building many more applications that help people with their personal finance.

5. MProfit: This is a desktop portfolio management software for Indian users. All your financial data is saved locally on your computer for data security.

6. InvestPlus: Invest Plus is your all-in-one Personal Assistant. Right now they have a special X’mas offer going on too!

7. InvestorFirst:The website, an initiative by NISM, is a cool and useful resource for financial literacy. (My review)

8. BankBazaar: If you want to do anything with loans, this site is a must. They have cool calculators and their services are super cool.

9. FundsIndia: It’s an online platform for buying Mutual Funds, Equities, Fixed Deposits, NPS and more.

10. Blogs: There are some awesome blogs on personal finance. They are SubraMoney, Rohit Chauhan, Deepak Shenoy, TIPGuy, Manish Chauhan, Hemant Beniwal, Manshu. Update: I missed Raag Vamdatt and TheWealthWisher

Here’s a bonus! Check out my website on personal finance too. It’s being updated regularly now.

All the above 10 resources are awesome and I aspire to be like them in some way or the other. And if you take it as a business, each of them compete with each other. But if you take it as a profession, there’s enormous scope of collaboration/s.

Atleast I am always ready to collaborate with them in any way I can.

Have I missed some awesome resources? Please let me know.

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Updates on Walking the Talk

Posted on September 30, 2010 by Ranjan

In my efforts to walk the talk, I cleared the NISM online test for Mutual Fund Advisors last week. I am also planning to take the IRDA test next month and enroll for CFP from FPSB shortly.

I believed that I don’t need a certification to be able to do financial planning. But let me admit that there’s a bit of arrogance in that belief and there will be important learnings when I study the course.

And even though, you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, learnings never stops and can continue to the last day of my life.

While I take steps on walking the talk, here are some updates from my website. Do let me know your feedback.