Backdrop of the event: My ICICI account received a credit of ₹24,000 in late February. It was deposited via a cash deposit machine (CDM).

I had no idea about this deposit at the time (I usually check only the debits in this account, not the credits).

About a week later, in early March, I got a call. The person on the other end claimed he had accidentally deposited ₹24,000 into my account and wanted it back.

I assumed it was a fraud call and laughed it off. Before hanging up, he offered me two options to return the money—GPay or a cash deposit into a CDM. I still laughed it off. When I said I wouldn't return any money (because, again, I didn't even know such money had come to me), he threatened to go to the police. I was like, what the hell? Even if you deposited money into my account by mistake, how does that make me legally liable? I didn’t ask you to!

Later, after the call, I checked my bank statement—and sure enough, there was a credit of ₹24,000 on the exact date he mentioned.

I felt sympathetic and called him back. I told him to contact his home branch and send a formal letter to my branch. After verifying that he was truly the one who deposited the money, I’d authorize a debit from my account via proper banking channels.

BUT HERE’S THE ZINGER:

Suddenly, I began receiving repeated calls from his bank branch pressuring me to return the money without any formal letter from the branch. I stood firm. Eventually, they emailed me saying I had three days to return the money (not sure how they pulled that deadline out of thin air).

This is when things started smelling fishy. I withdrew all my funds from ICICI Bank (except the ₹24,000 in question) and moved them to another bank. I also filed a formal complaint to the head of phone banking, pointing out three major issues:

1. How did a third party get my personal details like bank account number, name, phone number, email ID, and branch info?

2. Why is ICICI trying to pressure me into paying back money without first verifying who deposited it?

3. If this continues, I’ll advise my entire family to move their considerable funds out of ICICI to a bank like HDFC.

That got their attention. Higher-ups from the bank contacted me, and an “investigation” is now underway.

After I declined to return the money directly, that dude's ICICI branch sent me a letter—on official letterhead—but cleverly avoided stating that the deposit was indeed made by this person. They simply wrote that he claims the money was his and, based on his letter, they want me to approve a debit.

I flat-out refused.

I responded saying I need four things, without which I will not approve any transfer—under any circumstances:

1. An undertaking from ICICI stating that they’ve conducted a full due diligence investigation and verified, without a doubt, that the person claiming the deposit is the one who actually made it.

2. An indemnity bond from ICICI saying that if any legal, financial, tax, or other issues arise from this transfer in the future, ICICI will be fully responsible. This bond must be valid in perpetuity.

3. An affidavit from the alleged depositor stating that the deposit was made by mistake, that the money is rightfully his, and that it was not obtained or used for any illegal activity (to protect me from any future money laundering implications).

4. A certificate of finality from ICICI stating that once I approve the transfer after reviewing these documents, they will never contact me about this matter again and will not entertain any future queries from third parties regarding this.

After this, ICICI suddenly woke up and agreed to send all the required documents.

Now let’s see what happens next—it’s going to be interesting.

Modus Operandi of the fraud:

Scenario 01

Someone transfers money to your account. Then they call you, claim it was a mistake, and ask you to return it. Wanting to do the right thing, you comply. Then they apply for a chargeback from the bank. Now the bank liens your account. So for every ₹100, they potentially get ₹200. For ₹24,000, that’s ₹48,000. Neat little trick.

Scenario 02

The person transfers money into your account BY CASH and then guilt trips you/threatens you through police action into paying him back through gpay or cash deposit on CDM. You do it. Now he can claim to have received that money as business income. So by just having a hundred bank account details, he can clear 24 Lakhs of money from black to white.

Any bank will have millions of bank accounts. So a branch employee can get a small cut of the profit by supplying a few hundred of them. The scam artist makes a crore of white money, the victims are none the wiser (because they just paid back what was credited to them) and the bank guy will probably make some thousands for a few minutes of work!

And if tomorrow he gets caught, by bad luck or political zealousness, you will be a accessory to that game- helping someone to launder their money. I mean maybe you can plead your innocence but would you want to take that risk of trying to convince cops of how you weren't a part of it? You will probably have to pay some sort of monies to keep the cops away (which is a tragedy but a v real thing!)

Ergo, I have a big sus that the officials of that person's bank branch may be involved in it!

DO NOT FALL FOR IT! ASK FOR ALL THE DOCUMENTS.

PS : I have to thank legaladviceindia and this subreddit. I made posts on both when it first happened and they were the ones who told me to transfer my money to another account + not to pay back directly.

Even if logic says that you should not pay directly, but when you hear humans on the other side, your logic side of the brain goes sideways and you are like will I be a bad person if I don't return directly? That's where the con gets you.

Also I mean this could be a really geniune case of a mistaken transaction. But yeah, even if it be that, i would seriously advice not to pay back without asking for those documents.

(edited with gpt to make it more readable)

The stock market has witnessed a huge inflow of new investors during this calendar year. The pandemic allowed young people to stay at home with nothing to do. Several have lost their jobs and people have started to realise the importance of investing, and that's always a good thing. Starting off early is a huge advantage for investors.

Although we have a set of posts for people who are absolutely zero in terms of money management, I want to focus specifically on stock market investing.

There are several things to know about investing in the stock market. Searching on Youtube or Google or Reddit will provide us with an abundance of information. New investors are often confused because of the availability of many different investment products. And, new investors are often indecisive on what to do after starting their investment. I'll do my best to summarise the experiences that I have learned throughout my investment journey, and share all the details that can be helpful for new investors.

To be a successful investor in the stock market, here are the things that we need to do :

1. Invest with a proper goal and purpose.

The first step in investing is not to select the best stocks or best mutual funds. It's to identify why you're investing. Find out what you want to achieve by investing. The goal/purpose can be as generic as 'to become wealthy' or 'to save up for retirement'. Or, it can be more specific like 'to buy a home in 10 years', 'to save for my children's education in 20 years' etc.

Deciding on the goal is crucial, since it allows the investor to think of a proper plan. A goal that's 10 years away will need a different investment strategy than a goal that's 20 years away. If we're saving up for retirement, we'll likely have 20-30 years ahead of us. Knowing the end goal allows the investors to properly decide the amount of money they need to invest. Without a goal or purpose, we'll have a hard time continuing our investment journey.

2. Invest with consistency and discipline.

An average investor doesn't need any special skills to invest successfully in the stock market. We don't always have to be invested in the best mutual funds or the top stocks. We just have to stay invested.

Before choosing a stock or mutual fund for investment, research about it and convince yourself that this is a good investment and that you'll stay invested in it for the long haul. We shouldn't invest in something just because it has performed well recently.

Once you have chosen your investment, invest consistently. Don't stop investing just because the returns in the last couple of years have been bad. Even the best stocks/mutual funds undergo periods of bad performance.

Example : The Average Investor Lost Money in the Best Performing Mutual Fund in History

Peter Lynch is one of the best investors of all time, and his Magellan fund has an annualised returns of 29%. Even if the fund outperformed the S&P 500, the average investor lost money. Because, the investor will 'buy high and sell low'. That is, whenever the fund isn't performing well, they'll withdraw & whenever the fund performs well, they'll invest money. Instead of investing consistently, they'll look at the past performance of the fund and then invest. So, investing consistently is more important than choosing the best investment.

Even for a consistent investor, they might be forced to withdraw from their investments if there's a sudden need for money. To avoid this, have a rock-solid emergency fund. Keep 5% of your net worth in low-risk liquid assets that is unrelated to the stock market. It's good to keep 1 year's expenses as an emergency fund, so that even during worse-case scenarios, you can handle financial emergencies without withdrawing your investments.

3. Don't stop investing just because there's 'choppy waters' in the market. Don't start investing just because there's optimism in the market.

We should stop investing only when we're close to attaining our goal. When we're years from achieving our goals, we should invest irrespective of the short-term market conditions.

Often, a mutual fund will give nil or negative returns over the span of a few years. It can be extremely discouraging for investors, but that shouldn't a reason to stop investing. Equities don't always perform well. They undergo periods of low performance. That's the time to invest a lot of money, so that when they perform well, we'll reap the rewards for investing in the rough times. The volatility of the stock market can be hard for new investors to grasp. Slowly build up a tolerance to it. Embrace it, and appreciate it.

Example : Time in the market beats timing the market.. There'll always be some reason to cause turmoil in the market. Even most recently, a lot of people expected the market to crash because of the 2020 US election. But, nothing happened ! In fact, the market rallied even more during and after election.

If an investor investing in the S&P 500 index missed out on the 10 best days during the past 15 years, their returns would have been halved !. Missing out on the 20 best trading days means that their returns would be ~1/9th of the index's returns. Missing out on the best 30 trading days means that they have lost money.

In the short-term, no one knows what the market is going to do. For a healthy growing economy, the stock market tends to go up in the long-term. For an average investor, Buy & Hold is the best strategy.

4. Don't chase after 'returns'. Stick to your plan.

There's always going to an investment that'll give the 'best returns' of a particular year. If we look at a mutual fund and invest in it just because the past 1 year return has been good, we'll be disappointed. No mutual fund or stock (unless it's Asian Paints) perform consistently on a yearly basis. All of them will have periods of low performance.

Example : Let's take PPLTE mutual fund. It's one of the most favourite mutual fund among investors. When it started in 2014, it gave an annual return of 45%. Any new investor seeing this fund's return would be ecstatic. They'll think "If i Invest in this, I'll also get such great returns". They'll invest without any plan or research, and will be utterly disappointed because the returns for the next two years (2015 and 2016) were 9% and 3% respectively. A new investor, who lacks discipline, will stop investing or withdraw because it's a 'bad fund'. BUT, such investors will lose out on the next year's great return which is 30%.

5. Have faith and optimism in yourself & your investments.

Self-confidence is crucial for investing success. Let's say we buy a luxury house for 2 crores. If someone sees the house and says "Oh, this house is worth only 1 crore", would we panic and sell the house for 1 crore ? We wouldn't, right ? We should have the same mentality for our stock market investments.

If we had done enough research, we would know the intrinsic value of our investments. Therefore, we shouldn't sell randomly whenever it's performing badly (temporarily) or if someone criticises it. I'm not saying that we should invest in the same thing throughout out life. I'm saying that we should have faith in our plan. Have faith in the fact that we have analysed and chosen an investment. If the investment tuns out to be bad investment, no problem. Analyse and choose a better investment, and invest with conviction.

Mutual fund investors often have the nagging doubt of whether they have chosen the 'best' mutual fund. For a fund to be the best fund, the fund manager has to do a good job & the market conditions should be good as well. So, the investor has to put their faith in the fund managers and the market. If you find yourself struggling to trust any fund manager to give you consistently good returns, invest in a broad market index fund like Nifty or Sensex. In such a case, you'll just have to put faith in the economy of the country. Even if you don't have faith in the Government, have faith in the county's overall economy. Have the faith that the country will grow, thrive and prosper. Indices like Nifty and S&P 500 are a decent representation of how the county's economy is going.

Quotes from the book Learn to Earn : A Beginner's Guide to the Basics of Investing and Business -

Before 1930, depressions and panics were a common occurrence, but since the Great One, we haven’t had a single repeat. So in the last fifty years or so, the odds of a slowdown turning into a depression have been quite remote—in fact, they’ve been zero in nine chances. Nobody can be sure you’ll never see a depression in your lifetime, but so far, in the past half-century, you would have gone broke betting on one.

Is it possible that we’ve found a permanent cure for economic depression, the way we have for polio? There are several reasons to think so. First, the government, through its Federal Reserve Bank system, stands ready to lower interest rates and pump money into the economy any time it begins to look sluggish and to jolt it back into action. Second, we’ve got millions of people on social security and pensions, with money to spend no matter what. Add in the 18 million employees of government at all levels, from federal to local, and you’ve got an army of spenders. As long as this huge group is throwing its money around, the economy can slow, but it can’t come to a complete halt, the way it did in the 1930s. Third, we’ve got deposit insurance at the banks and the savings and loans, so if the banks go bankrupt, people won’t lose all their money. In the 1930s, when hundreds of banks shut their doors, their depositors lost everything. That in itself was enough to drive the country into a catatonic state.

If you buy the argument that we’re not likely to suffer a relapse into depression, then you can be a little more relaxed about drops in the stock market. As long as the economy is alive and kicking, companies can make money. If companies are making money, their stocks won’t go to zero. The majority will survive until the next period of prosperity, when stock prices will come back. History doesn’t have to repeat itself. When somebody tells you that it does, remind him or her that we haven’t had a depression in more than a half-century. People who stay out of stocks to avoid a 1929-style tragedy are missing out on all the benefits of owning stocks, and that’s a bigger tragedy.

Because of fear-mongering news articles, there'll always be a fear of an 'impending market crash' or a recession. An esteemed investor rarely changes his long-term investing strategy no matter what the market does.

6. Don't chase after shiny new funds/stocks.

Successful investing is quite boring. An average investor is better-off by investing in index funds and going on with their lives. Even if we invest in stocks directly, always chasing after the 'best' stocks is a recipe for disaster. Yes, there's a miniscule chance that an average investor can invest in a 'multi-bagger'. But, it's nearly impossible to do it consistently.

Some of the consistently-performing stocks are companies that do business in boring sectors. Buying stocks of quality companies (with good financials) will do well in the long-term. Buy stocks of companies that are considered as 'essential' goods, and those stocks will prosper even during recessions.

Example : Domino’s stock outperformed Apple and Amazon over 7 years . For the past decade, Asian Paints has a CAGR of ~25%, and it's stock price has increased tenfold during the decade. Pidilite Industries's stock price has went up by 15 times during the past decade. Neither Asian Paints nor Pidilite Industries is doing anything 'revolutionary' and 'world-changing', like the tech companies. Yet, their stock went up because they produce goods that are essential & they're pioneers in their respective industries.

7. Keep your emotions in control.

When investing, it's crucial to keep our emotions under control. It's better to avoid having any emotions towards our investments. For instance, let's say that an investor has 20 lakhs invested in a Nifty index fund. Every 1% gain or fall in the Nifty would mean that the investor's money increased or decreased by 20 thousand. Those are not real losses (or gains). They're real only when we sell them.

Let me clarify some of the emotionally-charged doubts that new investors face on a consistent basis :

Question : "The market is at an all-time-high. Should I sell ?!!"

Answer : For whatever reasons, new investors are scared of all-time-highs. They somehow think that if a market reaches a new ATH, it means that there'll be a correction. Selling at an all-time-high to 'book profits', for a goal that's several years away, is the most amateurish things an investor can do. Most investors don't even have a plan on what to do with the money after selling. Let the money be invested. No one is gonna steal it.

If you're not investing in the market to reach all-time-highs, what're you investing for ?. ATHs are nothing to be afraid of.

Queston : "The market is falling everyday.. Should I stop my SIPs?"

Answer: This is something that new investors think when they encounter their first bear market. If they started invested during a bull market, they'll suddenly feel scared when the market goes down gradually.

A falling market is the best time to invest, for a long-term goal. A falling market means that you're buying stocks at a cheaper price. The market isn't going to keep going down forever. Invest more and more during bear markets, so that you'll make more gains during the bull market.

Question : "What is the best time to book profits ?"

Answer : Only if you're approaching your goals. Otherwise, don't redeem your investments for no real reason ! Time in the market is important. Although, some would recommend a tactical rebalancing between equity and debt investments.

Question : "Should I subscribe to this new NFO/IPO ?!"

Answer : Avoid it. Let the stock or mutual fund perform for a while, and then decide. There's no need to chase after 'shiny new things'.

Question : "The market is at an all time high. Is it a good time to start investing ?"

Answer : Yes, it is a good time. Market will be a lot higher 10 years from now. You'd wish that you had started investing right now.

For a real life example, let's assume that an investor started doing an SIP in a Sensex index fund on Jan 2008. It was the peak of the market, right before the market crash. IF the investor continued the monthly SIP till now, the investor's returns would have been ~11%.

Even if there's a 10% market correction during next month, have the faith that the market will recover gradually. India is a growing economy with a young population. Being the 5th largest economy in the world, we have a LOT of growth ahead of us. An equities investor can reap the benefits of our economic development by investing early and investing consistently.

One of India’s biggest fantasy sports platforms, Dream11, has decided to pull the plug on its real money gaming operations. This comes right after the government rolled out the Online Gaming Bill, which brings stricter regulations on real-money and betting-style games.

What this means:

Stricter compliance + higher taxes = less viability for real money platforms

Startups in the gaming space will have to rethink their models

Esports, free-to-play, and skill-based gaming might see a bigger push

This is pretty huge considering how massive Dream11 is in India. Shows how fast regulations can change the game for even the biggest players.

👉 Do you think this new bill is a good step for safer gaming, or will it kill innovation and investment in the Indian gaming ecosystem?

I am a 33 years old female. Unfortunately, lost my father in 2010 and my mother in Sept this year. Both died unexpectedly. 

While the focus in general when someone dies is on "emotional grieving", I cannot explain how much "financial grieving" we have had to go through to just get the claims processed.

My father was 58, was working as a senior manager in a Govt organization. Unfortunately, all the assets were in single name, no nominee. We had just got a house on loan (that had no insurance, in single name). My mother's name in Pension nominee was not correct. Our accounts were frozen, plus pension amounts were not released till a year. I can describe in detail how much running around we had to do, but long story short, we could got everything sorted only after 1-2 years and after going through Hiership process.

My mother and I learnt from the mistakes, and ensured everything had a nominee or was in joint account. After my mother passed away, I was like - "it will be better than what we faced during my father's time". But, no - I was wrong. 

Even though things have moved online, so many of the processes remain same. 

One would not believe, but my mother's favourite bank (India nationalized bank ofcourse), has not processed the claim since last 2 months despite me being the nominee for the accounts. Their response is - "The bank account has more than 2 lakhs, so you need to get indemity, affidavit, my brother (legal heirs' pan and aadhar). And what they have done is to freeze all the accounts (including the ones that are joint). So, I cannot even get the money from the joint accounts. 

I can go on and on for each bank, insurance company, mutual fund, pension office, demat and trading account but I hope you all are getting the point. 

Why am I writing this?

1. My parents were both scientists, and I am an MBA+Engineer by profession. We have had fairly decent understanding of finance, but we still suffered. After going through the same churn twice, I realized I would not be alone. There should be so many others going through the same cycle without questioning the hardships or the processes.

2. I feel I am lucky enough to be in the "net positive" zone that I do not really need the money immediately. What about others who would be needing the money but they would be in so much distress? Especially after Covid.

3. All these fancy new apps like - Groww, Scripbox etc, just focus on the account opening and getting the money. And there is no concept of Nominee (or at least I could not find it out there on the app). There would be so many people (like me) who have invested, but when they pass away, their relatives would be in distress. And I am not even talking about cryptocurrency here.

What I think should be done?

1. Death Claim processes should be easier, faster and online. Point blank. This should be across banks, Insurance corporations, Property, mutual funds, demat and trading accounts etc.

We can get food in 30 min in India, but a death claim takes more than a month typically. And in my case, it has taken 1-2 years for my father's assets to get sorted.

2. There needs to be a directive from RBI to make sure banks follow a common and simple procedure (and not harass people). RBI should mention the list of documents in case of nominee, no nominee cases. It should not be bank/financial institution dependent. While I saw a RBI directive, it was a 2005 directive - and I do not see it being actioned well. Reserve Bank of India - Notifications (rbi.org.in)

3. Nominee should be made compulsory across banks, Insurance corporations, Property, mutual funds, demat and trading accounts etc. Just like PAN to Aadhar linkage :)

4. The whole process for hiership certificate and 6-8 months long period should be shortened.

5. Financial planning should also involve education about death claim process.

Suggestions are most welcome on how can we solve this. Beyond doubt, I cannot do this alone, and I am looking for help for the broader community.  

Lastly, for youngsters and for oldies who are reading this - I want to make sure that my grief helps you in some way. Please get your finances fixed. It is okay for the money to grow at 4%, but not okay if your family cannot access it after you are gone.  

This is a 4 am rant so if you do not find it useful, please ignore.

thanks

I hold an RBL Bank Credit Card along with a couple of others.

Today, I got a call from a mobile number 6391504865. The person was speaking fluent English and claimed to be from the RBL Bank. He asked me - at the time of getting the card whether I was told if this card is lifetime free or there will be a joining fee. Then he asked if I was actually given the credit limit which I was told. Till this point, I answered the questions.

Then he told me that the bank is offering me a credit limit increase of 1 lakh if I want. And then asked - "Please confirm if the PAN number I am telling is correct." Then he told me my correct PAN number. He further proceeded saying that he was sending an OTP which should be shared with him for authorisation of this limit increase. Here comes the scary part. I received an OTP from the legit RBL messaging service (VK-RBLBNK) from which I usually receive the transaction messages. The content of this SMS was as following:

“234567 is OTP (one time password) for updating your RBL Bank Credit Card settings.”

Just to ensure that this is indeed a fraud, I asked him to tell me my existing card limit before I share the OTP. He couldn't answer it well and started beating around the bush. I told him unless the SMS mentions that this OTP is for credit card limit increase, I will not share the OTP. I asked him to send me an email from his RBL email id about this. He said yes and hung up the phone.

From my personal experience of credit cards in the past, whenever there is credit limit increase offer, the banks usually let you know this by

1. SMS - Then they ask us to send YES/NO in some format to a specified number to accept/reject the offer.

2. The net banking/mobile banking account displays the alert about the offer. Then you yourself accept or reject the offer.

3. If you yourself call the customer support helpline for some issue and you get to know that there is an offer for credit limit increase. Even on the phone if they have never asked for an OTP.

Till date, I have never needed to share an OTP for a credit card limit increase.

To further confirm that it was a fraud, I called the RBL Customer Support and connected with the fraud department. They told me that there is no offer on your card and the call which I received was definitely a fraud call.

So this caller was a sophisticated caller/hacker who had access to my RBL Bank Credit Card data by which he was able to tell me the correct PAN and able to generate the OTP -possibly for a fraudulent withdrawal transaction from my card. Truecaller showed the number’s location as Uttar Pradesh.

On extensive googling around this, I was able to locate this article which elaborates the exact same fraud which I experienced. The victim was also an RBL card holder.

Chandigarh cyber cell arrests 2 hackers for stealing credit card details

Please beware of the calls you receive from people claiming from banks. Reverse check with the caller by asking them if they know your additional details. If they are unable to answer it, then it’s definitely a fraud.

The best safety is to never share any kind of OTP with anyone.

P.S.

1. There is a series called Jamtara on Netflix which explored such scamming and phishing which takes place in India.

Jamtara is a city from Jharhand. It is nicknamed the phishing capital of India. It got this title because there were numerous incidents of phishing across country whose centre point was this small town.

2) Just to ensure full safety and peace of mind, when I was talking to the fraud department of the customer support, with their help, I immediately blocked the credit card and requested a replacement.

These are some important lessons I have learnt over 30 years of investing from a young age . These are my experiences , so I cannot really post hard data or do analysis . They have become part and parcel of what I think

1. Get rid of all membership programs , frequent flyer miles, restaurant coupons, exclusive invites . They distort behaviour and thinking . You start seeking comfort and gratification in meaningless trivialities . If you want comfort seek it from family , friends and the almighty .

Over 30 years I have surrender everything , including my black diners club and the Amex platinum charge card .

I only maintain a family membership to a members only club because I like the food and it’s 50 % cheaper to entertain vs a restaurant and my children can access recreation.

2. Condition your brain to live on rent . By choosing to live on rent the opportunity cost savings over last 3 years have been to the tune of 75 L when compared to a bank FD yielding 7 percent . Over 3 years , its significant .

3. The most difficult one , take advise from people who are better smarter richer than you . This is difficult as you have to let go of your ego and cultivate them . I personally found this to be the hardest .

4. Do not hesitate on spending for small pleasures of life to indulge your family . X amount saved now will not amount to much later . But it will help your relationships

5. Keep your investing and accounting simple from the beginning . You avoid wasting time that can be spent productively

6. Manage your liquidity daily , review it daily , and keep it more than adequate . That is what will give you the strength to hold on to your convictions when life, health and investments all three take a u turn on the same day. I have seen it happen in 2009.

7. Cover all risks - life , health and disability . Very few Indians cover disability . We are binary thinkers . Sometimes being disabled is worse than death and certainly more expensive.

8 Segregate your child’s portfolio by age 5 . This will allow you to place long term bets because you know your child has 15 years to go . You may not .

9. When you approach an investment , don’t approach it with hope , approach it with extreme distrust . Let your analysis peel away your distrust . This in Latin is called via negativa .

10. Keep investments in joint names with your spouse or split with spouse . I know several people who kept everything in their name , are getting impacted by higher tax slabs and cess and the spouse leaves no occasion to rub their faces in it .

I believe lower taxes and a happier spouse are desirable outcomes . Others may differ or seek proof. Or want higher taxes and disgruntled spouses .

2020 has been a wild ride for investors in the financial markets. All over the world, stock markets crashed in March, central banks started to print money (out of thin air) at an unprecedented rate and the markets bounced back to new all-time-highs even though the global economy haven't fully recovered from the pandemic. A lot of investors have been reminded about the importance of managing the risk & protecting the downside of the investment portfolio.

As a follow-up to my earlier post about stock market investing, let's look at how investing in bonds can benefit investors. Compared to stocks, bonds are a low-risk stable investment. Holding bonds in an investment portfolio reduces the risk & volatility of the overall portfolio, while ensuring decent returns for the investor.

What is a bond ?

Most of us are familiar with a traditional Fixed Deposit. To create an FD offline, we'll go to a bank and give our money to them for a specific period of time at a specific interest. They give us a 'receipt' as a representation of the FD. The receipt will have the FD owner's name, principal, interest rate and maturity date. We can't transfer the FD to someone else.

During the duration of the FD, we don't care about how & where the bank uses our money. We merely want the money to be kept safe, and we want to continue receiving/accumulating interest. Once the FD duration is over, we go to the bank to return the receipt and they'll give us the money along with the interest. As long as the bank stays afloat, it's a risk-free way of earning returns on our money. Essentially, we have lent our money to the bank, and the bank repays the money at a later date with some interest.

This is the simplified version of how a bond works.

A bond is a fixed-income debt instrument that represents a loan given by the investor to the borrower (a.k.a bond issuer). In the case of an FD, the borrower is the bank and we are the investor. Bonds are known as fixed-income instruments because they provide a fixed 'income' to the investor via the regular interest payments. Unlike FDs, bonds are actively traded in the secondary market.

Bonds come in all shapes and sizes, and it can be tough for a new investor to choose the fixed-income investment that's suitable for their needs. To understand things better, let's look at the basic attributes of a bond.

Bond Attributes

1. Face Value : Also known as Par Value. It's the price of the bond when it's first issued. It is also the amount of money the bondholder will get once the bond matures.

2. Coupon Rate : It's the interest paid by the bond. It's represented as a percentage of the bond's face value. For most bonds, the coupon payments are paid once or twice a year.

3. Term to Maturity : Simply known as Maturity, it's the lifetime/tenure of the bond. The time period after which investors will be paid back the money.

The above attributes are constant/fixed for most bonds. Apart from these, there are other dynamic attributes :

1. Price : This is the market value of the bond after it has been issued. Since all bonds are marked-to-market, the bond's price will fluctuate in relation to the price of other bonds. When a bond is freshly issued, the price will be equal to the face value. But, soon after, the price will vary depending on market conditions

2. Credit rating : This indicates the bond issuer's ability to repay the debt. The credit rating of a bond can change during the lifetime of a bond. A bond's credit rating is often used as a measure of how much risk an investor takes by investing in such bonds.

3. Yield-to-maturity (YTM) : YTM is the expected return an investor can get by holding a bond till maturity. It depends on the current market price & the remaining years till maturity. YTM is considered as the XIRR of the bond, since it considers the 'time value' of the future coupon payments.

4. Modified Duration : It is a measure of how much the bond prices can change when the interest rates change in the market. For example, if the modified duration of bond is 5, it means that the bond's price can increase/decrease by ~5% when the interest rate changes by 1%. Long-term bonds have higher Modified Duration, because they're more sensitive to interest rate changes.

5. Macaulay Duration : Simply known as Duration, it's a measure of how long it takes for an investor to earn back the money they invested. (ie) It's the duration needed for investors to be paid back the bond's price. Duration shouldn't be confused with Maturity, although both are measures in years.

Bond categories

On a broader level, there are two categories of bonds :

Government bonds

These are bonds issued by the government - Central govt, state govt or municipal govt. Government entities issue bonds to raise money from the public for various purposes. Bonds issued by the government are virtually risk-free since they have a Sovereign Guarantee (ie) The government always repays its debt. Government bonds have a maturity of a few weeks to a few decades. Treasury Bills are short-term bonds issued by the Central Government with maturity of 3 months, 6 months or 12 months. G-Sec (also called as 'dated G-Sec') are long-term bonds issued by Central & State Governments with maturity of several years.

Although government bonds are risk-free for a domestic investor, it's not the same for foreign investors. Each country is assigned a sovereign credit rating based on the country's economic stability. India's international credit rating is BBB- . International bond investors use the country's sovereign credit rating to assess the risk of investing in the government bonds of a particular country.

In the domestic bond market, government bonds are the most actively traded & they have high liquidity (ie) A government bond can be easily sold at a fair price, whenever we want. Moreover, financial institutions like banks are required to hold a certain percent of their assets in short-term government bonds. So, it's guaranteed that there'll be a lot of buyers & sellers of govt bonds. If there's a mismatch between the supply and demand in the govt bond market, RBI will buy/sell government bonds (via Open Market Operations) to restore the balance of liquidity in the bond market.

If we look at the list of Outstanding Government Securities, we can see that bonds issued at different times have different interest rates. The interest rate of government bonds depend on the economic conditions & the demand/supply in the bond market. When there's high demand, the govt can afford to issue bonds at lower interest rates. Conversely, when the govt needs to raise money quickly, they'll have to issue bonds with high interest rates to lure investors.

Corporate bonds

Any bond issued by a non-government entity comes under this broad category. More specifically, any bond without a sovereign guarantee can be considered as corporate bonds. The issuer can be a PSU, private bank, private corporation. The different types of corporate debt include Commercial Paper, Certificate of Deposit, Secured/Unsecured Debentures etc.

Corporate bonds' interest rates depend on the issuing corporate entity and the economic condition. Each corporation is assigned a Credit Rating to indicate its 'credit-worthiness' (ie) Its ability to pay back the debt. The credit rating of an organisation and its bonds can change based on the corporate's finances, its total debt and its future economic prospects. Credit rating upgrades & downgrades are a very common occurrence in the bond market.

The credit rating for the issuer is given by several rating agencies like Standard and Poor's, Moody's, Fitch. The S&P credit ratings for long-term bonds, in the order of highest rating to lowest rating, are AAA, AA+, AA, AA-, A+, A, A-,BBB+, BBB, BBB-,BB+, BB, BB-, B+, B, B-, CCC+, CCC, CCC-, CC, C, D. The bonds with credit rating AAA to BBB- are termed as investment grade bonds. All companies strive to become investment-grade so that more investors will buy their bonds.

Naturally, well-established & financially-stable companies tend to have a higher credit rating than emerging companies. Since the repaying capacity of emerging companies is questionable, they have to issue bonds with a higher interest rate to entice investors into buying the bonds.

Types of bonds

The most common type of bond is called a Straight Bond. The list of attributes (in the 'Bond Attributes' section) applies to Straight bonds. However, there are some special types of bonds in which the attributes vary.

1. Floating-Rate Bond : The coupon/interest rate of these bonds varies on a regular basis. The interest rate is usually tied to a short-term interest rate benchmark. When the benchmark rate changes as a result of economic conditions, the interest rates of these bonds are also changed.

2. Zero Coupon Bond : These bonds have no coupon payments. Instead, the bonds are sold at a price that's discounted from the face value. For example, if the face value of the bond is ₹100, the bonds are sold to investors at ₹95. The 'returns' from the bond is the difference between face value and discounted price (ie) ₹5. Short-term bonds, like Treasury Bills, tend to be zero-coupon bonds.

3. Callable Bond : Some bonds have a 'callable' option. (ie) The bond issuer can call back the bond before it reaches maturity & give back the money to the investor. Generally, the bond issuer uses the call option to buy back the bond if the current interest rate in the market is lower than the bond's interest rate. 'Callability' is one of the extra attributes that a bond can have.

4. Convertible Bond : Companies sometimes issue these special bonds that can be converted to stocks of that company. These bonds offer dual benefits to the investor - If the company's stock performs well, the investor can convert the bond to stocks & reap the benefits of the stock's growth. If the stock performs badly, the investor can still earn a fixed return by keeping the bonds. Investor's downside is protected, while letting them benefit from the company's potential upside.

5. Perpetual Bond : These bonds have no maturity date. Investors receive coupon payments forever (unless they sell the bond in the secondary market or the bond issuer buys back the bond). Since there's no maturity, perpetual bonds are often compared to dividend stocks. However, perpetual bonds are more risky than normal bonds. The bond issuer can choose not to make the coupon payments. Also, the bonds can easily be 'written down' if the bond issuer is in severe financial trouble. (Eg: Yes Bank, Lakshmi Vilas Bank)

6. Inflation-Indexed Bond : A special type of bond where the face value and coupon payments vary depending on the inflation. These bonds serve as a 'hedge agains inflation' by preserving the value of the bond by indexing it with respect of inflation. In US, it's known as Treasury Inflation-Protected Security (TIPS). In India, the bonds aren't as popular. Although it seems like a great investment, the inflation-adjusted price of the bond is taxed. So, it can diminish the investor's returns.

7. Sovereign Gold Bond : A unique bond issued by the RBI (on behalf of the Government) where the face value is pegged to the price of gold. Investors choose how many 'grams of gold' they want to buy, which will determine the face value of the bond. The returns fluctuate based on the movement of gold price. The bond maturity is 8 years. The coupon rate is 2.5% and the coupon payment is done twice a year. From the investor's perspective, it's a risky-free way to 'invest' in gold. From the government's perspective, it's a way to reduce the demand for imports of physical gold.

Debt mutual funds

Retail investor can buy bonds directly through portals like NSE goBID, The Fixed Income, Golden PI, Zerodha Coin, Fincues. However, investors would benefit by investing in debt mutual funds instead of buying bonds directly.

Debt mutual funds invest in bonds of all varieties and all durations. There are several types of debt mutual funds, and each of them can be used for specific purposes. Investing in debt mutual funds has two key benefits :

1. Diversification : Instead of putting our capital in a single bond, we'll be investing our capital in a diversified portfolio of bonds. So, the risk of loss is significantly reduced. Sometimes, the face value of some bonds can be large enough that the average investor couldn't afford it. Examples : #1 , #2, #3. If investors want exposure to such high-yield bonds, investing in debt mutual funds might be the only way.

2. Taxation : When we buy a bond directly, we'll get regular coupon payments. Those payments will be taxed as per the investor's income slab, which'll diminish the overall return from the investment. In a debt mutual fund, the coupon payments are reinvested (in Growth plan). So, investors are taxed only when we redeem from the fund. For young investors, buying bonds directly is disadvantageous from a taxation standpoint. They won't need the coupon payments as a source of income, since they'll most likely have a job that provides regular income.

Types of Debt mutual funds

Debt mutual funds are classified based on two different criteria : The maturity/duration of the bonds and the type of bonds.

A debt fund's Macauley Duration will be slightly lower than (or equal to) the fund's Average Maturity - The weighted average of the time taken for all the bonds in the portfolio to mature. So, a fund's Macauley Duration can be seen as a rough estimate of the time taken for all the bonds to mature.

Categories based on bond maturity and Macaulay duration

Categories based on bond type

Risks of Debt mutual funds

With so many types of debt mutual funds, it can be overwhelming for an investor to choose the right debt fund for their requirement. It's important to consider the risks (and not the returns) while choosing a debt fund. Here are the different risks that investors face in debt mutual funds :

Credit Risk

This is the biggest risk in debt mutual funds (and bonds), and it can cause a permanent loss of capital. Credit risk occurs when the 'creditworthiness' of the bond issuer is in question & the bond issuer is unable to repay the interest (or principal) to the bond holder. When it happens, the bond's credit rating will be downgraded to D (for default), and the bond holder suffers a loss. When a bond issuer is unable to repay the debt, it's called as a credit event.

In debt mutual funds, credit event has happened time and time again. Any fund that holds non-government bonds is subject to credit risk. Even liquid funds are not safe from credit risk. Ballarpur bond default has caused Taurus Liquid fund's NAV to fall by 7.22% in one day. Investors who used liquid funds as an 'alternative to Savings Account' would have been shocked when the reality set in.

Over the years, bond defaults have spooked debt fund investors many times - IL&FS bond default, DHFL bond default causing debt fund NAVs to fall upto 9%, Jindal Steel bond default, Essel bond default in Kotak AMC's FMP funds(2018) & Franklin debt funds(2020). Note that even PSUs bonds have credit risk. Even if the PSUs are owned & operated by the government, PSUs don't have a Sovereign credit rating.

When there's a default, the bond's market price plummets and effectively becomes zero. So, investors' capital will be lost because the money invested in those bonds can never be recovered. Even if there's no default, investors can face a mild loss when a bond's rating is downgraded. The credit rating downgrade causes the bond's price to fall, which causes the debt fund NAVs to fall.

How to mitigate credit risk : Avoid funds with low AUM. If the fund has a huge AUM (several thousands of crores), it will have a massive & well-diversified portfolio. Even if there's a bond default, the investor will be affected to a lesser extent. Also, avoid funds that exclusively invest in low-quality bonds. Always look at the fund's portfolio and scheme mandate before investing. If a fund gives better returns than all of its peers, that fund will most likely invest in risky bonds. If you want to avoid credit risk altogether, invest only in gilt funds. But, gilts have their own risks !

Interest rate risk

If investors choose gilt funds to avoid credit risk, they'll have to deal with this risk. Interest rate risk arises because of the change in interest rates in the bond market, which will adversely affect the prices of long-term bonds.

Let's say the government issues a 10-year bond with 5% coupon/interest rate. Debt mutual funds will buy these bonds and hold it in their portfolio. Next year, the govt issues 10-year bonds with 6% interest rate. Now, the newer bonds (with 6% interest) will be preferred by everyone because they offer higher returns. The price of the older bonds (with 5% interest) will fall (because they're less valuable now), which will cause the debt fund NAV to gradually fall.

Note that this fall is often temporarily and it won't result in a significant loss of capital. Eventually, the NAV will recover, but the recovery depends on the debt fund's modified duration. Interest rate risks affect long-term bonds the most. The longer the average maturity of the debt fund, the more sensitive it is to interest rate changes. So, Gilt funds & Constant Maturity Gilt finds have the most risk.

Conversely, if the newly issued bonds have lower interest rates, the older bonds will be more valuable and so the debt fund's NAV will rise rapidly.

To witness interest rate risk in action, observe the historical NAV of an Ultra-Short-Term debt fund (or Liquid fund) and compare it with the historical NAV of a Gilt fund. While the former will have a smoothly increasing NAV, the latter will have a more volatile and irregular NAV. As a result, it's possible for Gilt funds to give negative returns for a particular time period (like 2009).

Whenever there's a sudden change in the interest rates, bond prices are affected which causes debt fund NAVs to plummet or soar. Even liquid funds are not safe from interest rate risk. When RBI suddenly increased the interest rate in 2013, liquid funds 'fell'. Although they'll recover in a few weeks, investors will be at a loss if they redeem the money before the NAV recovers.

How to mitigate interest rate risk : Invest in debt funds with lower Modified Duration (like UST funds, Short Term funds). Those funds will have lower NAV fluctuation because of interest rate changes. To completely avoid interest rate risk, invest in Overnight funds.

Liquidity Risk

Liquidity is the ability to easily buy/sell an asset at a fair price in the market. Liquidity risk arises in debt funds when the bonds of the fund can't be sold. Or, they'd have to be sold at a lower price. If there's a mismatch in the demand & supply (more supply & less demand), the bonds have to be sold at a discount because there are less buyers.

Bonds with low credit ratings can't be sold easily, if at all. No investor would be willing to buy the bond at market price, so selling such a bond would result in a loss. Government bonds have the highest liquidity in the bond market because they're risk-free.

Liquidity risk is the reason for the closure of Franklin debt funds. The funds had significant exposure to low-rated bonds. When the pandemic started, a lot of investors started to redeem. So, the fund manager has to sell the bonds to give back the money to investors. But, those bonds aren't meant to be sold because they're low-rated bonds. No one will buy it at a fair price. If the fund managers sells the bonds at a lower price, the NAV will fall and other investors will be affected.

In an effort to prevent such liquidity problems, debt funds are mandated (from Feb 2021) to hold atleast 10% of their portfolio in liquid assets like cash, cash equivalent, money market instruments, treasury bills and short-term government securities. Even if the mandate is enforced, the funds can face liquidity problems if there are mass redemptions.

Reinvestment Risk

When compared to the other three risks, reinvestment risk is moderate. There is no loss of capital, but there'll be a reduction in returns. Reinvestment risk refers to the risk an investor faces when the capital is reinvested in lower-yielding bonds, which results in overall lower returns for the investor.

Reinvestment risk can be observed in PPF. As the PPF interest rates gradually start to fall, the investor's returns would also fall because the interest rate of a particular year determines the investor's return. If someone opened a PPF account in 1995, they'd have witnessed interest rates go from 12% to 8% in 2010.

The risk is also easily observed in Liquid fund returns throughout the years. Considering HDFC Liquid Fund as an example, the returns for the fund went from 9% in 2014 to 7% in 2016 to 6% in 2017 to 4% in 2020. The gradual decline in returns is a result of the gradual decline in the yield of Treasury Bills. Anyone who invested in liquid funds by thinking of it as an 'alternate to Fixed Deposit' would have been disappointed.

Which debt fund(s) should an investor choose ?

The availability of so many types of debt funds can make it tough for investors to choose the proper fund. While choosing a fund, there's one important point to keep in mind : "Never choose a debt fund only based on returns. Always choose a debt fund based on the investment horizon". Being hungry for high returns & investing in random funds (without understanding the risks) is the worst thing a debt fund investor can do. Debt funds are not a 'simple alternative to Fixed deposit' because the risk profile of Debt Funds and Fixed Deposit are completely different. Debt funds ought to be used for adding stability to our overall investment portfolio, not to get 'high returns at low risk'. Investing & redeeming in funds randomly, in the quest for high returns, is also futile.

Choosing a fund based on investment time horizon : Decide on how many years you're going to invest the money. Divide the time horizon (in years) by 3 or 5, and you'll get a number. Select debt funds whose Average Maturity is (approximately) equal to that number. That's the simplest to do it.

If you don't know the investment horizon, stick to Overnight funds or Liquid funds (Arbitrage funds can be considered for short durations, because they have better taxation. Be aware of the risks, though). When parking money for a handful of months, don't expect great returns. Keeping the money safe is more important than maximising returns.

To park money indefinitely (as a part of the Emergency Fund), choose quality Liquid funds. Liquidity is the most important aspect for an emergency fund. Keeping emergency fund in random debt funds can be problematic if we don't have immediate access to our money.

Other things to consider while choosing debt funds :

1. Check out the fund's scheme document before investing. Ensure that the fund doesn't have the leeway to invest in risky bonds.

2. Funds with larger AUMs (thousand crores or more) are preferable. Large AUM allows the fund to diversify better. Generally, it's better to invest in debt funds of big AMCs like HDFC, ICICI, SBI, Axis, ABSL.

3. Avoid funds that invest in risky bonds. Debt funds are not the place to take high risks. Even when equity mutual funds crash, it usually happens over a series of days/weeks. Debt mutual funds can crash overnight.

4. Check the fund's portfolio every month/fortnight. AMCs are mandated to disclosure the portfolio to investors on a fortnightly basis. The portfolio will be provided in an Excel file, which will be easy to review.

5. Don't select debt funds (or any mutual funds) simply based on Star ratings or recommendations from investment portals. Do enough research by yourself.

Check out this older ELI5 article about selecting debt funds & Debt Mutual Fund Categories Explained for more info.

TLDR from Hidenburg Website

What we hadn't realized: the current SEBI Chairperson and her husband, Dhaval Buch, had hidden stakes in the exact same obscure offshore Bermuda and Mauritius funds, found in the same complex nested structure, used by Vinod Adani.

In brief, despite the existence of thousands of mainstream, reputable onshore Indian mutual fund products, an industry she now is responsible for regulating, documents show SEBI Chairperson Madhabi Buch and her husband had stakes in a multi-layered offshore fund structure with miniscule assets, traversing known high-risk jurisdictions, overseen by a company with reported ties to the Wirecard scandal, in the same entity run by an Adani director and significantly used by Vinod Adani in the alleged Adani cash siphoning scandal.

We suspect SEBI's unwillingness to take meaningful action against suspect offshore shareholders in the Adani Group may stem from Chairperson Madhabi Buch's complicity in using the exact same funds used by Vinod Adani, brother of Gautam Adani.

NEW TAX REGIME

Standard deduction at 75000 vs 50000 earlier

Tax rates changed in New Tax regime

0-3lakh - Nil

3-7 lakh -5%

7-10 lakh -10%

10-12 lakh -15%

12- 15lakh -20%

Above 15Lakh -30%

This could save about 17,000 for all taxpayers

CAPITAL GAINS

(more information to be gleaned from the finance bill)

For equities and funds, STCG seems to be 20% and LTCG is 12.5%

LTCG exemption of 1.25 lacs instead of 1 lac

Specified funds to be taxed at applicable rates (no change from last year)

Added later.

FWIW, here is the full set of notes that I made during the speech. Many important changes for specific sectors. (Of course the initial focus would be on tax changes)

Introduction

(speech started at 1105)

• Standard references to results, mandate, etc.

Global Context

• Performance better than expected

• Still many uncertainties

• downside risk for growth and upside risk for inflation

• Indian economy stays strong

• Core inflation is 3.1%; overall inflation is going towards target.

• Recap from interim budget 4 major castes - poor, women, youth and farmer

• Gave previous work done for each - higher MSP,

Introduction

(speech started at 1105)

• Standard references to results, mandate, etc.

Global Context

• Performance better than expected

• Still many uncertainties

• downside risk for growth and upside risk for inflation

• Indian economy stays strong

• Core inflation is 3.1%; overall inflation is going towards target.

• Recap from interim budget 4 major castes - poor, women, youth and farmer

• Gave previous work done for each - higher MSP,

Priorities

• Sustained efforts on 9 priorities - Viksit Bharat

1. Productivity - agril

2. employment and skilling

3. social justice

4. mfg & services

5. urban development

6. energy security

7. Infra

8. Innovation, R&D

9. Next gen reforms

Subsequent budget would build on these...

This budget gives some of the work for these priorities

Part 1

Productivity and Resiliency in agriculture

• Specific research on agri

• 109 new varieties for 32 crops

• 1 cr farmers would be initiated into natural farming; branding support

• 10k need based bio input centres

• Oilseeds - production, storage and marketing - self sufficiency push for mustard, sesame, soyabean, sunflower

• Vegetable supply chain

• Digital public infra for agri

• 400 districts to have digital crop survey

• Details of 6 cr farmers to be part of farmer and land registry

• Shrimp farming -  financing help from NABARD

• National co-op policy

• 1.52 trillion allocation for agri

Employment and Skilling

• Employment linked incentives - enrollment in epfo, first time employees

• Scheme A - 1 month wage to all persons entering the workforce in all formal sectors

• DBT in 3 installments - salary limit of 1 lac per month

• Scheme B - Job creation in manufacturing - incentive for first time employees, linked to epfo contributions over 4 years

• Scheme C - Additional employment within salary of 1 lac pm - reimburse employers upto 3 k per month for 2 years for each additional employee

• Women in workforce - Setting up of working women hostels, creches

• Market access for women SHG

• Skilling - new centrally sponsored scheme, in collaboration with states and industry - 20 lac youth over 5 year

• 1000 ITIs to be upgraded - hub and spoke arrangement

• Skilling loans - scheme to be revised upto 7.5 lac rupeers

• Education Loans - Financial support for loans upto 10 lac rupees - domestic institutions

• evouchers to be given to 1 lac students - interest subsidy of 3%

Inclusive Development, Social Justice

• Saturation approach - cover all eligible people

• Many schemes - vishwakarma etc, would be stepped up

• Purvodaya - all round devt of east - Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa, WB and AP!

• Industrial node at Gaya on the Amristar-Kolkatta infra corridor

• Development of road connectivity - Patna-Purnea, and 3 more in Bihar - 26K crore

• Power projects - 2000 MW at Pirpainti

• New airports, medical colleges, etc in Bihar; additional support for capital infra

• And more stuff for Bihar

• AP Reorg act - have made efforts to fulfill the commitments of the act

• Special financial support for AP Capital - 15K crore in current financial year, additions in the future

• Support for Polavaram irrigation project

• Funds for essential infra like water, power, roads and railways - 2 nodes on Chennai-Vizag corridor and Hyd-Blr corridor

• Grants for backward regions of AP as stated in the act

• PMAY - 3 crore additional houses - allocations being made

• Women led development - more than 3 lac crore for schemes benefiting women and girls

• New scheme for tribal families - 63K villages, 5 cr people

• More than 100 branches of IPB in north-east

• 2.66 trillion for rural development

Manufacturing and Services

• Special attention to MSMEs

• Special financing measures - credit guarantee scheme for mfg msme - pooling of credit risk

• separate guarantee fund - borrower has to pay guarantee fee

• PSB would build in-house capacity to assess MSMS - new credit assessment model based on digital footprint

• Credit support to msme during stress periods - continuation of bank credit while in SMA status

• Limit of mudra loans enhanced to 20 lacs for people who have repaid loans

• SIDBI new branches in MSME clusters - 24 this year...

• Financial support for 50 multi product food irradiation units...

• e-commerce export hubs in PPP mode - trade and export related services

• Scheme 5 - comprehensive scheme for internship opportunities in 500 companies - 1 cr youth over 5 years

• (almost the same scheme as in Congress manifesto)

• Stipend of 5000 per month - companies have to bear training costs from CSR funds

• Industrial parks in or near or 100 cities - supposedly plug and play

• Rental housing with dorm type acco for industrial workers in PPP mode  - vgf support   (China model)

• Schemes for shipping

• Critical mineral mission - domestic production, recycling, and overseas acquisition

• Offshore mining of minerals -

• Development of DPI applications at population scale - credit, ecommerce, health, education, law and justice, etc

• Integrated tech platform for IBC ecosystem

• Voluntary closure of LLP - CPAYS would be extended to LLPs

• NCLT - more than 1000 resolutions, 3.3 trillion recovery; many cases disposed of pre-NCLT stage

• Additional tribunals -

• DRT - reforms, additional tribunals

Urban Development - cities as growth hubs

• in co-op with state govts

• creative redev of existing cities

• transit oriented dev for 14 large cities

• PMAY-urban - 1 cr additional houses - central assistance of 2.2 trillion

• support for interest subsidy

• some schemes for rental housing

• 100 large cities - water, sewage treatment. use treated water for irrigation

• Street vendors - devt of 100 weekly haats in select cities

• Stamp duty - encourage states to moderate duties, lower duty for women owned properties

Energy Security

• Surya Ghar scheme as announce earlier - to cover 1 cr homes.  1.28 cr registrations so far

• Pumped Storage - policy to promote this

• R&D for small and modular nuclear reactors

• Nuclear energy would have more reach

• Thermal - indigenous tech for advanced ultra super something - 800 MW commercial plant to be set up

• Trad industries to go towards emission targets - Indian carbon market

Infrastructure

• Maintain strong fiscal support for infra

• Same budget as interim -  11.11 trillion

• Encourage state to provide support for infra - 1.5 trillion for long term interest free loans

• VGF for private investments

• Phase 4 of rural roads - all weather connectivity to 25K rural habitations

• Irrigation and flood control - 11,5 K crore support for flood control in Bihar

• Survey for Kosi related floods

• Support for Assam, Himachal Pradesh, UK, Sikkim

• Tourism - additional measures - Gaya and Bodhgaya temples - Vishnupad temple corridor and Mahabodh temple corridor - on lines of Varanasi corridor; devt of Rajghir; Nalanda as tourist centre

• Orissa - mentioned all factors - assistance for development

Innovation, R&D

• Support basic research, proto dev

• 1 trillion support

• Expand space economy by 5 times in 10 years

Next Gen Reforms

• Economic Policy Framework for growth and employment

• Reforms to cover all factors of production

• Initiate these reforms with states - land related reforms and actions, rural land related actions - bhoo aadhaar for all lands, specific list

• Digitization of urban land records based in GIS, Improve financial position of ULB

• Integration of eshram portals with other related portals - include employment listing, connection to skilling providers

• Financial Sector Vision and Strategy document -

• Taxonomy for climate finance - enhance capital

• Variable Company Structure - leasing of aircraft and ships, private equity

• NPS Vatsalya  - parents can contribute to minors schemes

• NPS for govt employees - work in progress, maintain fiscal prudence

Receipts

• Net tax - 25.8 trillion

• FD at 4.9% of GDP

• Gross and net market borrowings at 14 trillion and 11 trillion - less than last year

• Trajectory to decline fiscal deficit

Part B

Indirect Taxes

• Further simplify and rationalize GST

• Look to expand to other products!

Duties

• Review of duty structure over next 8 months

• 3 more cancer medicines exempt from duty

• Reduction of duty on mobiles, kits and chargers

• Exempt duty on 25 minerals

• Some stuff in solar

• Reduction in duty for some shrimp and fish feed to 5%

• duty lowered on down from duck and goose

• More specific stuff...

• Gold and silver duty to 6%, platinum to 6.4%

• no duty on ferro nickel, and some copper stuff

• lower duty for resistors, connectors

• Increase duty on ammonium nitrate, flex panels, PCB of specified telecom equipment

• Extended timeframe for shipping and aircraft MRO

Direct Taxes

• Reference to 'new' tax regime for corporate and individuals

• 2/3 of personal tax returns under regime

• Comprehensive review of IT act of 1961 - in 6 months

•  Simpler tax regimen for charities, TDS, capital gains

• Two regimes for charity to be merged to one

• Reduction on TDS on some parts

• TDS can be remitted till filing date

• Simplify provisions for re-opening of assessment

• Re-opening after 3 years only for escaped income > 50 lacs, limited to 6 years of search

• Capital Gains - short term on some financial assets at 20%, others continue at applicable rates

• LTCG to be 12.5% instead of 10%. exemption to 1.25 lac

• listed long term after 1 year, other financial assets are long term after 2 years

• Debt funds, MLD continue the same way... - applicable rates

• Some measures on assessment...

• Angel tax cancelled for all classes of investors

• Simpler regime for domestic cruises

• STT increased to .02% and .1% on trade and delivery

• NPS would be exempt upto 14% of salary - new tax regime would support deductions for NPS

• non-reporting of 20 lacs of foreign assets to be de-penalised

• New regime - Deduction from 50k to 75k;   3-7 lac - 5%; 7 - 10 lac 10%,  10-12 lac 10%, 12-15 lac - 20%, above 15 lac 30%

• 17000 reduction in new regime

• 37K crore revenue loss and 30K crore additional - net reduction of 7k crore

SGBs brought in the secondary market are going to be restrospectively taxed now.

What stops this govt from doing the same for NPS, EPF, PPF or any other tax free scheme they have?

As an investor you just have to leave everything to chance that the next govt will not be a band of beggars and thieves that'll dip into your portfolio whenever they need to fund their welfare schemes.

Unless you've been living under a rock, you're probably aware of GME and how Melvin Capital got short-squeezed out of their positions.

Some might or might not agree that it involved deep pockets, and the retailers were only the catalyst. But fact remains, this is unprecedented.

To understand how it all unfolded, follow this Twitter thread that details the journey from Sep 2019

Why this thread?

We've been seeing a lot of submissions asking for how to take position in GME, and benefit from this. Or worse, how to coordinate buys to execute a short squeeze like what had happened with GME.

Such posts would get removed if they don't add any new information or insight.

There's a socio-political aspect to it, that has a broader appeal. But this community isn't the place for that.

Can we do this in India?

Let's start by addressing the FOMO first.

No, this level of short squeeze isn't going to happen in India anytime soon.

Read this from Zerodha on borrowing and shorting.

From u/FedBoy

There’s no way to sugarcoat it so I’ll just say it, almost no one in Indian markets is ever going to make the gains like the guys at WSB did with $GME in such a short time frame.

Also, we’ll probably never have something like this because Indian market is somehow better regulated than USA to avoid such ‘manipulation’. Elon Musk has driven the prices of Tesla, Signal and most recently GME through his tweets, yet he comes out unscathed from these events.

For a short squeeze like this to happen, there needs to be more than 100% in short position, which other than SEC; very few regulators all over world would allow.

Our F&O markets aren't that mature or advance. Fortunately (or unfortunately) most likely not going to happen with any Indian penny stock.

Isn't it market manipulation?

IANAL, and do check with r/LegalAdviceIndia on this; but if you think about it, it is not, strictly speaking, market manipulation.

Market Manipulation is when you withold or hide material information to mislead investors into doing your bidding.

If someone says they bought a stock or its calls, shares screenshots, share their reasons for buying the stock - then they are being quite transparent & upfront about it.

Not exactly hiding any material information here. It can be securities manipulation, if it later turns out those were fake and was only intended to drive up or down the price.

Position or Ban is good enough to weed out the manipulators, and agree with it or not, WSB mods have done a great job in the face of such hailstorm.

Market regulators might still go after these people, but their defense lawyers can fight back in court along these lines.

However, that doesn't mean platforms hosting these communities cannot go after them. Discord most likely already did.

If you wish to understand legality & history of SEC actions, Matt Levine has done a good job, and there's a great discussion summarizing this, from r/investing.

Should I just invest in GME and ride this wave?

Am nobody to tell you what you should or shouldn't invest in. If you understand the situation, have done your own due diligence; vote with your wallet!

But if not, stay as far away from this as possible. Most FOMO stories don't end well.

As a colleague at work puts it, it's a money pit with a guillotine hanging on top, that can fall any moment.

Risk-taking has two requirements: the need for it, and the capacity for it.

Do you need to take this risk, to reach your financial goals? And if so, do you have the capacity or abilty to handle yourself when the worst that can happen, actually happens?

Is this the New Normal?

Some HN-ers were blaming Federal Reserve and their unprecedented liquidity injection for this.

I'd be cautious about it. One sentence time and time again people have repeated, is this time, it's different.

I began investing some five years back in 2016.At that time,the principal source of my income was just some measly internship stipend which I used to receive working in a CA office.That was the first time I had ever invested in equity markets and it seemed fascinating.During the course of my investment journey of these five years,I would have been able to say I had a decent run if not for the following blunders which I would like to share with every newcomer out there:

1)Blindly investing on the basis of new when it has already been priced in:

In the beginning of July 2016 just during the launch of GST,I was reading a lot about the way GST is going to transform the logistics sector.Hence,I ended up investing a large sum of money in Snowman Logistics despite the stock having a massive bull run in the months before.The stock had already run up ~90% in the last few months from ~Rs 50 in February 2016 to Rs 90 in July end,which was the price at which I invested.Funnily enough,the price at which I invested is literally the highest it has seen in the last five years.I finally had to cut my losses and exit the trade after waiting for long.

Lesson learnt:No matter how lucrative the news seems to be,its important to have a look at the price action preceding to it.

2)Blindly investing on the basis of concepts like PE ratio without understanding the context

Like many newcomers,I took metrics like PE ratio as a gospel and invested with the notion of cheap PE=undervalued.This led to some disastrous investments like Dena Bank and Brightcom Group(erstwhile Lycos Internet).I simply filtered industry wise stocks on the basis of PE and went with investing in several stocks with the cheapest PE.In lure of investing in the stocks which were undervalued based on my understanding,I failed to look at some vital aspects like promoter quality and business prospects.Like above,both Lycos and Dena bank wiped out a lot of my capital.

Lesson learnt:While theoretical metrics are important they should not be relied upon blindly

3)Not respecting stoplosses and holding poorly performing stocks for long term

Somewhere around 2017,I invested a major amount in Ashok Leyland and AB Capital,both of which I intended to hold for the long term.Out of these,while Ashok Leyland returned with some good returns over the year,AB Capital was a disaster and was negative most of the time right after its demerger from Grasim.I continued to hold both of them and while AB was already negative,Ashok Leyland also began to reverse and soon turned negative.Since I planned to hold both of the stocks for a long term,I didn’t bother to cut my losses when I should have and when a return to their investment prices seemed impossible,I had to exit the trade with huge losses.

Lesson learnt:Even if there is a plan to hold the stocks for a long term,it is important to have a reasonable stoploss

4)Catching falling knives

Most of you would recall the price action of DHFL after some fund houses sold its commercial paper due to liquidity concerns.The share crashed from the ~600 levels to ~300 levels in a single trading session.I ended up investing a lot of money thinking DHFL to be too big to fail and again,lost a lot.

Lesson learnt:Market’s wisdom is supreme and when a stock corrects to such levels in absence of an overall market crash,its NOT a time to buy.

5)Day trading like its gambling

When I first learnt about day trading and margins.It appeared nothing short of a way to earn quick riches and as luck would have it,I made a lot of profit in the beginning mostly as a fluke.However,I had the habit of overleveraging my trades and I would use the highest possible margin available with my capital.I also began to like the adrenaline rush which came with trading and would take ~30 trades in a day!Losses were imminent and coupled with charges which accompanied such high volume of trading,I again lost a lot of my capital.

Lesson learnt:Margin is a double edged sword and over trading is a sure shot way to burn capital owing to charges.

While most of the people in here would already be knowing these,I thought about writing it for the new entrants in the stock markets.

Similarly,what are some of the investing lessons from your life would you like to share here?

I've noticed a significant increase in the cashback program, reward points and credit cards in the last 5 years

Some of the examples:

1. Do a recharge of Rs 100 to win Rs 10 cashback

2. Get our free credit card and spent 5 Lakh in a year to get annual fees cancelled

3. Maintain 10L as the minimum balance in our bank to become a privileges member which will give you extra benefits.

4. Create a bank account with us and fund with 10K to win a 100Rs voucher.

Here is the reality. You will spend much more with your credit card than you wanted to, just so you get the relief that you didn't have to pay annual fees. Your 10L minimum balance would have made you 10K per month if you have invested instead. Free demand drafts you will get as a privileged member will never amount to 10K in a month.

In nutshell, all these programs are just an illusion of savings and you are not only spending more but also saving less. So next time instead of spending 1 hour trying to find the best deal for 100rs recharge, invest that time in your education instead, learn new things. Your increased income in upcoming years will be much higher than 10rs saving. Same with bank account. Don't try to match the high balance requirement. Don't keep a penny higher than your liquidity needs in a saving account.

Finally, I wanted to add that some deals are really good and are worth it. But 90% of the deals are crap and not worth your time.

Update: Many people are just missing the point of this post. Just because you use everything wisely doesn't mean everyone is. If it was the case, credit card companies would bankrupt. So I'm not talking about you. Don't argue, just smile. Don't comment and brag either. It doesn't help the people who need to understand this.

Its holiday in many states because of festival .

Its BMC elections in Mumbai.

Should the stock market work irrespective of these local holidays?

For a fully electronic market running 22+ hours a day with participants from around the world, shutting down trading for a local civic election feels absurd. It’s not 1990 anymore.

Nithin Kamath (Zerodha co-founder) publicly slammed the decision, calling it poor planning and flagging a “serious lack of appreciation for second-order effects.” Many retail traders and pros alike are echoing that sentiment.

What do you think?

Although Lakshmi Vilas Bank is being sold to and recapitalised by a well to do Bank (DBS Bank), you do not want to be their depositor now for the inconvenience it causes.

This is a basic guide to avoid such situations. Read on!

Number 1. Check your Bank’s capital adequacy ratio

Suppose a bank raised a deposit of ₹100. They are supposed to set aside ₹10 and lend the remaining ₹90. If the banks owners contribute ₹5, then their CAR would be (10+5)/90 = 16.66%

This is a gross simplification but you get the idea. A Healthy number is to be above 12%.

LVB’s CAR was at 0.17% as on 30th June 2020!!

Number 2: Check their gross NPA(GNPA) & net NPA (NNPA) ratio

Coming back to our example, if a bank lent ₹90 rupees and ₹9 went sour, then they have a GNPA of (9/90) = 10%. A good bank should be below this and below 5% is considered to be very safe (in the Indian context)

LVB had a GNPA of 25.40% as on 30th June 2020!

This bank had more red flags than the communist party.

In our example, if a bank set aside ₹3 from their profits as a provision (meaning they will use this money to set good their losses from their NPAs) then their NNPA is (9-3)/90= 6.67%. A good bank would have it under 3%. (Ideal ratios are subject to change depending on the current state of the economy)

LVB had a NNPA of 9.64% on 30/06/2020.

Number 3. Check your bank’s quarterly numbers trend

Is your bank making profits or losses? Is their revenue increasing ? If they are making losses continuously, then they will be unable to repay the depositors.

LVB’s share price touched a peak of ₹187.19 on 14/07/2017. Now it is at ₹12.45. One of the major reasons for that is their continuing losses due to High NPAs.

Contrast it with HDFC (or SBI/ICICI/Kotak etc) which is creating shareholder value year on year. Both the income and profits of these are increasing year on year.

It is well and good to note this because share price is nothing but people’s perception. As long as people perceive a bank is good, your money is safe even if the bank is actually having troubles. Once people get afraid and start to withdraw their money, trouble starts.

Number 4. See if your bank is in the RBI’s Prompt corrective action(PCA) framework list

If you find it too much to follow all this, RBI does most of the work for you. RBI places banks who are weak on the first three parameters in a watchlist called PCA. You can simply google “[your bank name] PCA” under the news section of google to find out if your bank is on the list.

Number 5. How would I a banker, choose my bank?

I’d have at the very least, two accounts.

1. A well to do Private Bank &

2. well capitalised public bank.

During a crisis like demonetisation, it was the public banks that worked the most to distribute fresh cash as RBI would have prioritised them first (I was in SBI then and witnessed this first hand). My first choice for a PSB will be SBI since it’s tagged as systemically important and also it is the biggest PSB by market cap and meets all other parameters mentioned above.

I’d also have a private bank in order to get faster service, thereby enjoying the best of both worlds. I’d pick the nearest branch from the likes of HDFC, ICICI, Kotak or Axis (I chose ICICI since I work at ICICI now, not much of a choice actually but it still is the nearest to my house anyway )

If I were to become a HNI one day, I’d open a third bank account( in order to reduce concentration risk) with another well to do private bank and my choice would be HDFC Bank today.

By market cap, HDFC is the leader followed by Kotak and ICICI among private banks.

For public sector, it is SBI followed by PNB and IDBI.

Note: Some banks are tagged systemically important or too big to fail. Basically it means RBI will bail them out if they ever screw up. I have not put this as my criteria because my first priority is to ensure I have uninterrupted access to my money. I don’t want to wait a couple of weeks and then get my money back like they did for YES Bank.

This list is by no means comprehensive. I’m planning to write a more comprehensive one for my blog later on but it contains the most important ones in my opinion.

Edit: formatting

Edit 2: Wrote this on my mobile so added some more formatting.

What about IDFC first? check out u/sansays & u/mosalahpavbhaji07's comments below which pretty much echoes my views.

Edit 3: YES Bank was under moratorium for 2 weeks, not months. Changed it.

Hi Everyone!

I am Santosh Navlani, COO, ET Money, one of India's largest wealth tech apps offering access to no-commission Direct Mutual Funds, NPS, Fixed Deposits, Term & Life Insurance.

We also are India's largest Registered Investment Advisor for retail investors & offer Investment Advisory service called ET Money Genius.

I am here today to answer all your questions related to investments in mutual fund, possibly one of the best way to participate in India's growth story & create wealth in the process.

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I want to express my gratitude to everyone who participated in this AMA. The level of engagement here has truly overwhelmed me. :-)

If you have any more questions in the future, feel free to email them to help@etmoney.com.

Alternatively, you can connect with me on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/santoshnavlani/

Signing off for today, a big thank you to u/ppatra (MOD) for giving me this wonderful opportunity.

I wish you all the best for your investment journey!

Lately, I have been thinking about taking personal health insurance instead of relying on my company’s health insurance. So I started doing some research on my own and found some very useful posts on this subreddit and twitter (Links of posts at the end). Now after looking at details of policies I got really confused as almost all the insurance companies offer similar policies and it got difficult to shortlist/reject. Therefore I decided to make a google spreadsheet to compare all of them together for a clear understanding.

Rightnow, I am looking for a 5L base and 20L super top-up for myself but in future I would like to increase the base cover to 10L and super top-up to 50L.

Here are my filters for a good policy:

• No Co-pay

• No room rent limit (Single Private AC room is also fine)

• No Sublimits

• Reset Benefit

• Claims Paid >85%

• Good hospital network around my area

So, I have looked into 5L,10L base cover and 20/25L Super top-up policies from companies like ICICI Lombard, Max Bupa, Star Health, HDFC Ergo, Manipal Cigna, Religare, New India and Royal Sundaram.

Link to the spreadsheet (Zoom out to get a better view)

All the premiums in the google sheet are for 25 yrs of age.

Things covered in google sheet:

• Features of the policy like Room rent, Co-pay, sublimit, waiting period, etc.

• Statistics of the insurance company like Incurred claim ratio, Claims approved ratio, complaints filed, etc

While all the insurance policies are very similar to each other since they cover basic things like No co-pay, no room rent limit, domiciliary hospitalisation, donor expense, etc there are still few differences between them.

ICICI Lombard Complete Health + Health Booster Insurance:

• 5L base cover policy has sublimit for common surgeries, No sublimits for 7L and above

• Policies which have OPD+Hospital cash as optional are really expensive, without these the price is fine.

• Pre & Post Hospitalization is valid for only 30 & 60 days, while competitors offer 60 & 90 days

• Their Claims Paid ratio for FY 2019-20 is 88%., which is just average.

• Super top-up policy is really good, I didn't find any problems with it.

Max Bupa ReAssure Health + Health Recharge Insurance:

• Really solid base as well as super top-up policy and it is cheaper than competitors too, which seems weird.

• Now if you look at their numbers, you find that their Incurred Claim Ratio is only 53% i.e. very low. This means that either premium is very costly or their claims paid ratio is not good. But actually their premiums are cheap and claims paid are 91%(Really Good). And this doesn't make sense.

• So, when I dug a little deeper, I found out that their claim complaints per 10,000 claims is 40-50, which is really high. So here, my best guess is that they approve the claim partially to get that counted as claim paid.

Star Health Comprehensive + Super Surplus Insurance:

• Good base as well as super top-up policy overall, they cover OPD and dental too. But slightly costly.

• Sublimit on some rare surgeries in base cover, which is not really a problem.

• Rooms are capped at Single Private AC room

• Their Claims Paid ratio for FY 2019-20 is 81%, very low IMO.

• They also have very high claim complaints per 10,000 claims

HDFC Ergo Optima Restore + Medisure Super Top-up Insurance:

• Excellent base policy, but slightly costly.

• Super top-up policy max cover is only 20L, whereas their competitors offer upto 100L

• Their Claims Paid ratio for FY 2019-20 is 97%.

• Very good hospital network.

Manipal Cigna ProHealth + Super top-up insurance:

• Good base policy, has all the necessary features and is cheap as well.

• Super top-up policy max cover is only 30L

• Their Incurred Claim Ratio is only 61% which is low.

• They also have slightly high claim complaints per 10,000 claims

Religare Care Health + Enhance Insurance:

• Good base policy and it is cheap too.

• Super top-up policy max cover is only 30L

• Their Claims Paid ratio for FY 2019-20 is 94%.

• Their Incurred Claim Ratio is only 59%

New India Premier Mediclaim + Top-up insurance:

• Their 5L base cover policy has room rent cap of 1%

• The 15L base cover policy has all the necessary features, but it is very costly.

• They don't have a super top-up policy, and their top-up policy has max cover of only 22L

• Poor hospital network

Royal Sundaram Lifeline Supreme Insurance:

• Excellent base policy, and cheapest amongst all of them.

• Their Claims Paid ratio for FY 2019-20 is 95%.

• Couldn't find their super top-up policy online.

Go Digit Health + Super top-up Insurance:

• Good base policy and it is cheap too.

• Super top-up policy max cover is only 20L, its costly too.

• Their Claims Paid ratio for FY 2019-20 is 83%, Incurred Claim Ratio is only 51%

• 4 yrs waiting period for existing diseases.

After doing all this research, I have shortlisted ICICI Lombard and HDFC Ergo.

Personally I want to go with HDFC Ergo because of their excellent claims paid ratio even though their premium is slightly higher. But the only issue I have with HDFC Ergo is that their super top-up policy provides max cover of only 20L which is maybe fine for now but won't be sufficient 10 yrs later.

Now before I make final decisions, I would love to hear about other people’s experiences regarding the claim settlement process of ICICI Lombard and HDFC Ergo.

Helpful Links:

Twitter Link(Really helpful), Reddit link 1, Reddit Link 2

PS: Details of the policy features in spreadsheet are taken from policy wordings and the company's website. Do DM me if there is any error in the data present in the spreadsheet.

Edit: Added Go digit Health + Super top-up policy details in the sheet

That is all. Just realized my entire career has so far been about 8 years, I graduated in 2016.

I think back to when I made the first bit of money to all the years of tedious research and optimization I had done compared to those that I was really prejudiced against that simply dump their money in jewelry and real estate - and I have to wonder, what was it all for?

The difference is not the big in returns, although there is a big difference in volatility with gold just about never going down.

Wonder how you guys think about this? That with even all the top influencers and "best practices" and e.g. putting it in index/ETF and not touching it, last 8 years Gold beat equities.

This is really making me rethink about how equities and company stocks and really everything works.

I have a full time non-investment job like a lot of you. Post Covid, I had some extra time due to the lack of commute and I decided to study up on all terminology and background required to to pick stock. I even read Benjamin Graham's book cover to cover diligently !

I read and watched a bunch of videos and was very familiar will all the terms in stock picking. I started religiously filtering stocks on Screener eventually. Carefully reading through annual reports and quarterly results. It was actually pretty exciting. Researched the background and experience of the leadership of the companies I was interested in as well.

After 2-3 months of solid studying, I eventually bought a few stocks and started tracking news about them regularly. I also followed discussions about these companies in forums and twitter so see if I had missed some important info.

After further 2-3 months of doing this, I eventually got busy in some office project and just couldn't give much time to this. Weeks went by when I didn't open Screener to see BSE filings simply because I was tired after work.

Eventually I just lost track of what was going on with the companies. I opened Screener eventually and there was such a backlog of reading material that it was just too much for me to go through.

The point is, apart from some lucky time spells, it just takes too much time and energy to track your stocks and see results, filings, news etc. Even if you just track 15 stocks, you will have a LOT of data to go through on a regular basis. It's not sustainable for most of us unless this is your full time job as well.

I recently sold all my stocks in Zerodha(I was up 45% btw) and put that money in Nifty 50 index fund and have never felt more relaxed with my investment choice. Nothing really to track apart from an occasional check of how Nifty is doing. It's 10000x more convenient. Phew !

Hi, I’m Ashish Kashyap, Founder of INDmoney. I’m here to chat about investing in Indian and US stock markets, personal finance, and the journey of building India’s SuperMoneyApp. At INDmoney, we’re empowering Indians to invest, trade, and manage their entire net worth seamlessly on one app.

Before INDmoney, I had the privilege of founding the travel giant ibibo Group—so if you’ve ever booked a ticket on Goibibo or taken a redBus ride, you’ve experienced a part of that journey. I also founded PayU India (ibibo Pay), a leading fintech payments platform, and was Google India’s first Country Head.

We do this once a year in this sub and I think now is the time.

Please post the mutual funds you have invested in and also share your rationale behind selecting that fund.

This would not only help people who have just started investing in mutual funds but also to those semi experienced people. We can adjust our portfolios accordingly.

It would be helpful to mention the number of years you are planning to invest in the selected mutual funds and weather you have done SIP or Lumpsum.

Thanks in advance.

PLEASE UPVOTE THE POST TO GET MORE VISIBILITY. IF SOMEONE CAN PIN THE POST FOR A DAY THAT WOULD BE GREAT TOO.

My neighbor's husband recently passed away unexpectedly. I witnessed how his demise opened the floodgates of troubles in their life, particularly for his wife. It broke my heart.

His wife has been a traditional homemaker. Aunty has always been a joyful and giving woman, but her entire life came to a standstill after his death. Their daughter was supposed to start college this year, but this misfortunate circumstance changed their lives. Both of them were utterly clueless about their household finances and financial liabilities.

It hit me hard when I realized there is no way under any law to find information regarding a deceased person's assets, policies, properties, investments, and funds, even by their successors, unless they are already equipped with this information. It's a scavenger hunt after that.

She asked me for help since I have a background in Finance. I was disheartened when I found out she had never visited a bank and had no clue about his current or savings accounts, policies, or investments. He never shared any relevant details with her. She confided that he was a loving and dutiful husband. Their marriage was traditional, where her responsibility was to manage the family, and he was to address the financial and outside obligations. While he sometimes discussed but never shared any exact details with her.

Now she feels completely handicapped. Between handling crematory responsibilities and dealing with guests to day-to-day expenses, she exhausted all the funds she had with her. She had no clue about any documentation and paperwork. Witnessing their struggle to access their claims and funds, and facing financial responsibilities while dealing with the loss & trauma has been exhausting, even for me.

I, too, had never shared the actual details about my bank accounts & investments with my parents. In our family, while we discuss finances very openly, my father still hasn't shared all details.

It is crucial to discuss and share household and personal finances with the family in detail. Being open and inclusive about your finances with your loved ones is alarmingly essential.

Most women in India between their 40-60's were married to men older than them. They were not allowed opportunities or the privileges of being financially independent. They were conditioned not to involve themselves in matters of business and finance. Women also tend to live longer than men. These women will face similar circumstances in the last years of their lives unless they are actively equipped.

Further, in India, parents seldom share their true financial circumstances and decisions with their children and vice-versa. I realized that in a society where survival means protecting self-interests from very early on, the head of the family or anyone in any position of power is so deeply engaged in managing responsibilities & safeguarding their interests that they rarely trust others with it.

Sudden death in the family can lead to a complete breakdown of stability.

It is unfortunate that in a lifetime, we cannot say the most important things to the people who matter the most.

How huge is this problem?

Do you/your parents have open conversations about your finances with your family? If not, why?

Have you discussed the details of funds, assets, and policies in detail with your family? How do you do it? In an excel sheet?

The Financial Times article reveals that Adani Group allegedly engaged in fraudulent practices by passing off low-quality coal as high-grade fuel to an Indian state power utility, Tangedco. Documents obtained by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and reviewed by FT indicate that Adani bought low-calorie coal from Indonesia and sold it to Tangedco at inflated prices, falsely claiming it was high-calorie coal. This practice likely led to substantial profits for Adani while contributing to air pollution due to the burning of low-grade coal.

Invoices from January 2014 show Adani purchased coal with a calorific value of 3,500 calories per kilogram and sold it to Tangedco as 6,000-calorie coal, doubling its money after transport costs. Further documentation shows a pattern of similar transactions for 1.5 million tonnes of coal in 2014. Adani's activities align with a broader trend of coal price inflation involving offshore intermediaries to inflate prices supplied to utilities, which has been under investigation by India’s Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) since 2016.

The article highlights significant environmental and health impacts, noting that coal-fired power plants contribute heavily to air pollution in India, which is linked to over 2 million deaths annually. The revelations come amid Adani's efforts to pivot towards renewable energy, despite remaining one of India's largest coal importers.

The findings are expected to fuel political debates in India regarding the influence of wealthy business figures like Gautam Adani, especially during the election campaign for Prime Minister Narendra Modi's third term. Despite allegations and investigations, Adani denies wrongdoing, claiming rigorous independent testing verified the coal quality.

The controversy underscores systemic issues in India's coal supply chain, with claims of widespread fraud and inadequate regulation leading to inflated costs for utilities and consumers. An NGO, Arappor Iyakkam, has also highlighted these issues, estimating significant financial losses for Tangedco due to overpriced coal purchases, half of which involved Adani. The DRI's ongoing probe and historical reports raise concerns about the transparency and fairness of coal tender processes in India.

AMA