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Whether we employ peons in our companies or we employ house helps at home, we all (at least you, my clients) are employers at some level or another. These employees, while not below the poverty line, are extremely vulnerable to catastrophic events such as sudden illness, life-threatening accidents and the often ignored lack of income […]

In a recent discussion among friends, we briefly debated the idea of the lack of training in probabilistic thinking in our schools. We discussed how of all disciplines we learn about in school, statistics and probability has by far been the most useful in practice. Being a Six Sigma Black Belt in my previous job,

I was pondering over the topic for this month’s blog when my wife in the background was reminding me that our children’s end of term report cards were ready and that we need to collect them from the school. This set me thinking about Aroha Capital’s composite report card. Aroha Capital was incorporated in February

28-Feb-15 My dear client – you would have by now received an email from finametrica, asking you to fill up a questionnaire for assessing your risk profile. The idea is to systematically document your appetite for risk and ensure that the investments I suggest to you are in-line not only with your financial goals but also

31-Jan-15 My recent visit to the networkFP national conference & exposition has set me thinking. At the outset, I was deeply impressed with the overall conference and was delighted that my two days at Mumbai were well spent. The conference was practitioner centric and brought to the fore the variety of issues that are faced by the

31-Dec-14 Screaming newspaper headlines, voluble TV anchors and incessant email or sms “tips” are agog with seductive investment opportunities in “growth companies”. I thought that I should share my perspective on growth and felt it best that I start with a few questions: Definition of growth: That growth should be defined as increase in sales (“top-line”

30-Nov-14 Many clients I have spoken to have Unit Linked Policies (ULIP) in their portfolio of investments. Clients are either unaware of Term Life policies or believe that they are more expensive than ULIPs. Is this really true? How do we make an apple-to-apple comparison between the two? A Term Life Policy is a life

31-Oct-14 SEBI circular no. CIR/IMD/DF/21/2012 dated 21-Sep-2012, mandates mutual funds to provide a separate plan for direct investments, i.e., Investments not routed through a distributor. Such a separate plan shall have a lower expense ratio excluding distribution expenses, commission., and no commission shall be paid from such plans. The plan shall also have a separate NAV

30-Sep-14 Rising markets distort portfolio allocations in two ways. The first is by the sheer improvement in valuations, equity portfolios rise and hence take a significantly larger portion of the asset allocation than previously planned. The second is by getting carried away in the euphoria of rising markets and further increasing exposure to equity assets

31-Aug-14 Over the last 6 months India has seen a steady and definite improvement in its macro fundamentals. With a simple majority government coming to power, levels of uncertainity are significantly reduced and confidence is at an all time high domestically. There seems to be a confluence of local and global factors that are working