
A deep dive into bond market jargon
Odd lots, subordinate bonds, waterfall mechanisms – understand these and other bond market terms

Odd lots, subordinate bonds, waterfall mechanisms – understand these and other bond market terms

We assess where the rate cycle stands, the FD options you have, and what your FD strategy should now be.

SIPs in stocks have caught up in the last few years after many online broking platforms started offering this as an automated feature. But is

Building a stock portfolio is not easy, but it’s not terribly hard either. Aarati Krishnan gives useful pointers in this QA article on building a stock portfolio.

You should be able to make do with just 4 to 12 funds in your entire mutual fund portfolio to meet all your goals

One of the very first questions you’ll be faced with after deciding to buy a term insurance plan, is – What’s the size of the term cover (what insurers call the sum assured) you’ll need?
Most folks don’t put much thought into this and go for the nice round number suggested by their insurance agent, which is usually Rs 1 crore. You can online calculators, but they can throw up widely diverging numbers.

Apart from the fund manager’s skill, a hidden factor that explains such return differences is the investment styles in which each fund is managed. Right now, many of the funds that have managed to top the charts with a 16% return are value-style funds, while the laggards are growth-oriented ones.

“Which equity fund should I buy?” When asked an open-end question like this, most financial experts recommend an index fund. Choosing an index fund is supposed to be far easier than choosing an active fund from the hundreds of schemes. But the number and variety of index funds in India has mushroomed too. There are about 94 open-end equity index funds, while over 120 equity Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) are listed on the exchanges. So, if you’re thinking of buying an index fund, how do you choose the right one? Here are four metrics to choose the best index funds and ETFs.

If you’re new to stock investing or aren’t quite sure how our stock recommendations fit into your investment plans, we hope this article on constructing a stock portfolio will help you.

For Indian investors looking for regular income with the possibility of capital appreciation, Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) and Infrastructure Investment Trusts (InvITs) are good vehicles. These entities own a bunch of real estate or infrastructure assets that throw up regular cash flows and distribute over 90% of their cash flows to their investors. As both their income and the value of the real estate or infrastructure portfolio they own can rise over time, REITs and InvITs offer the prospect of rising income with capital gains.

After lying low for a while, gold as an asset class has woken up from its long slumber in the last six months. International gold prices, which fell by 3.3% in 2021 and 0.3% in 2022, have gained 9% so far in 2023 (as of April 11) and are up by 20% in the last six months. In India, gold prices recently bounced off a lifetime high of over Rs 61,000/10 grams, having gained 18% in the last six months. This recent run has made investors sit up and take notice of sovereign gold bonds, gold ETFs and other vehicles to own gold. But should you jump on the bullion bandwagon now?

Debt investors have been so starved of good returns lately, that any return above 7% now seems like a grand prize. This is why, after the government recently announced an interest rate of 7.7% per annum on National Savings Certificates (NSC) for the April-June 2023 quarter, there was much jubilation. Apart from warranting a fresh look at the NSC itself, this rate hike promises to significantly lift returns on a Central government-backed instrument – GOI Floating Rate Savings Bonds 2020 (GOI FRSB).
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