If you are an old reader of this blog, you will probably know about my journey of investing in stocks and how I built up a portfolio. In case you are a new reader, you may want to search for posts with relevant categories or tags to get a better idea of the same. In the new mantra of this blog, I have decided to keep each post short and sweet, so I will simply focus on the results of these investment selection and strategies, without getting into the details of it. So without much ado, here are the top 10 holdings that I currently have in my portfolio. Note that while I will mention their rela ..read more

I have been writing this blog for over 7 years now and one of the most common queries that I get from readers is whether I provide any Financial Planning services. Let me be upfront about this at the start – I do not provide such services in the way they are normally understood, nor am I a SEBI registered Financial Planner. In fact, I have absolutely no intention of being one too as I do not see this as my profession. However, I do provide a service to select people who approach me directly. I have given the acronym of HELP to it. The expanded form is Holistic Engagement in Life Planning ..read more

I am writing a post in this blog after a really long time and, to be honest, I did not have any clear thoughts about reviving this blog too. However, the messages that I received from several of the readers, saying that they liked the blog and that it had helped them significantly in their life and financial journey, kind of convinced me that there is a lot that I can share yet to benefit others. After all, at this stage of my life, I am mainly looking at adding value to the lives of other people, directly or indirectly, and this blog and what I post therein can really go a big way in fulfilli ..read more

If you have read the book “Who moved my cheese” you will know that very often we get a tad too comfortable with status quo, unless a disruptive event happens to change things altogether. 2020 has been a year of the pandemic and there have been several lessons that we have learnt from this massive and painful disruption. In my opinion the most important one is that of the transience of life – not that we did not know of the fact that we all will die one day, but we had probably all managed to keep it away from our conscious being. The pandemic has ensured that death has been brought bang on cen ..read more

I had written a post earlier about how we need to look at our lives and take stock of it in the post Covid world. Since then a lot of people have asked me as to how this will apply to career planning. The purpose of this post is to outline my thoughts as to how career planning will have to change in the new times. What are the changes we are facing today in the business environment with specific focus on jobs and careers? Well, there are many but I can think of the following significant trends :- The physical office will become less relevant with time and several companies and job roles will ..read more

For a long time investors have been told worldwide and especially so in India that it was good to keep investing in equity regularly without worrying about the ups and sowns of the markets. I must say that most of the people who started investing after 2008 had been quite benefited by the same too. The markets generally went up over the years and the MF schemes largely did well, at least till 2017 or so. However, as the last few traumatic months have taught us, investors cannot trust the passive mode of investing any longer. Let us understand the issue with MF portfolios in light of what happe ..read more

Over the years, I have believed in my 2 asset theory for investments as an ideal combination for financial planning and it has worked out well for me. Several people have asked me at different times, especially when the markets are going gung ho, as to why I am interested in Debt when equity is doing so very well. I am sure the events that unfolded in 2020 have made them much wiser now. Equity as an asset class will always go through it’s ups and downs and that is really not an issue. Your financial planning framework will normally have a plan for equity over 15-20 years and even more. For suc ..read more

The situation has been quite dismal this year through the world and I have been rather negligient of writing posts in this blog. In many ways, the crash in the stock market in March caused me to be fairly listless. Even as an experienced investor, it is not easy to see that 1/3 of your equity portfolio has vanished into thin air in just 10 days time !! So, yes, March and April were difficult times and I was fortunately busy with other things such as my B school mentoring and a couple of HELP related assignments. I am thankful to my readers that they keep reminding me of writing posts, even tho ..read more

From time to time I get people requesting me to help them in Financial planning or to review their existing portfolios. While this is an important exercise by itself, I have always felt that it is a bit analogous to putting the cart before the horse. Finances support your life decisions and activities by allowing you to do the things you want to do in life. They do not, cannot and should not determine how you lead your life. A lot has changed for the world and India in the last 3 months and life, as we know it, will be very different from now on. In the changed context, my suggestion is that y ..read more

Over the last one month I have got several messages from readers of this blog and people I know otherwise as to how their financial plan have gone totally wrong just in the space of a few trading sessions. Most people are shell shocked and are wondering how the basic strategy of SIP which was seemingly invincible has shattered so completely. While I agree that the current sell off is something no one could possibly have anticipated, the seeds of such a risky financial planning was sown much earlier through the SIP route. The last time the stock markets in India went for a roller coaster ride w ..read more