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ULIP vs. Mutual Fund - where should you invest?
Mutual funds & ETFs
Pavithra Jaivant

ULIP vs. Mutual Fund – where should you invest?

As far as investment products go, ULIPs (short for Unit Linked Insurance Products) have the reputation of being the ‘bad boys’. While investor wariness toward ULIPs in their earlier avatar was justified, they have evolved since their pre-2010 days following changes made by IRDAI. However, ULIPs have still not entirely managed to shake off their reputation. In this article, we pit the present day ULIP vs. mutual funds – and compare them on parameters such as their function, how they invest your money, liquidity, expenses and tax treatment and see how they stack up.

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Mutual funds vs PMS – Pros and Cons
General
R Balakrishnan

Mutual funds vs PMS – Pros and Cons

For investors who can write a single cheque of Rs 50 lakh or more, Portfolio Management Services (PMS) have emerged a popular vehicle for investment into equities. In effect, PMS is identical to investing directly in shares, the main difference being that you have given absolute power to the PMS agency to buy/sell shares on your behalf and your portfolio choices are left to them.

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short term money
Bonds & Deposits
Aarati Krishnan

Have short term money to park? Here’s a cast iron option

Lately, it is not just India’s stock market that has been hopping all over the place like an impatient child. The bond market has been doing it too! India’s 10-year government bond yield, which sets the benchmark for all other debt instruments, climbed vertically from 5.8% in July 2020 to 7.61% in June 2022. But after that, it has been unable to make up its mind on whether to climb higher or pause for breath. 

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International funds – what are your options now?
Strategies
Bhavana Acharya

International funds – what are your options now?

Funds investing internationally were the flavour of the season all of last year. That changed in February this year, when funds hit the ceiling set by the Reserve Bank on how much they could invest in overseas securities. When we first explained the scenario, expectations were that this cap would be increased in due course and international funds could open up again.

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What’s next for HDFC MF investors
Commentary
Aarati Krishnan

What’s next for HDFC MF investors

Chief Investment Officers (CIOs) or star fund managers bidding goodbye to an AMC, or even the MF industry, has become a commonplace occurrence in India. The recent bull market has seen many well-known fund managers, from Kenneth Andrade of IDFC to Sunil Singhania of Nippon quit their MFs to seek greener pastures in managing PMS schemes or AIFs. 

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All your debt fund doubts, answered
Commentary
Vidya Bala

All your debt fund doubts, answered

It is true that debt funds have been a washout in the past 3 years. For an investment of 1-2 years, FDs would have marginally (although not significantly enough) returned higher than liquid and ultra short duration funds.

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Governance at mutual funds
Commentary
R Balakrishnan

Governance at mutual funds: What you should know about the inside workings

While one doesn’t know enough yet to comment on the veracity of these allegations, this does shine the spotlight on the issue of governance at mutual funds. There’s a lot of song and dance on whether listed public companies are managed in the interests of their shareholders. But what about mutual funds? 
MFs are essentially custodians of public money, where both profits and losses are entirely passed on to unitholders. I give money to a fund manager to deliver a certain return from an asset class. But I am paying a fixed fee to him which he gets whether he does better or worse than the market. This pass-through nature of mutual funds means that the unitholder is most affected when the fund is mis-governed or mis-managed.

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Our response to your comments on our Axis fund call
Commentary
Vidya Bala

Our response to your comments on our Axis fund call

We upset a few of you with our call on some of the Axis funds last week 😊 Some of you commented on the blog and others raised tickets. We thought it would be better for us to respond through an article for the benefit of others as well. 

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Axis mutual funds; What should you do?
Commentary
Vidya Bala

What to do with your Axis mutual funds?

Axis Mutual Fund issued a public notice removing and replacing two of its fund managers, Viresh Joshi and Deepak Agarwal, from seven of its schemes — Banking, Technology, Consumption, and Nifty ETFs and Axis Value, Quant and Arbitrage Funds. This move was accompanied by speculation that the managers were suspended on front-running charges. Axis Mutual Fund hasn’t explicitly mentioned front-running charges, but it has confirmed that it has been investigating “potential irregularities” with the help of external advisors.

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update on Parag Parikh Flexi Cap and investing internationally
Commentary
Bhavana Acharya

An update on Parag Parikh Flexi Cap and investing internationally

In January, mutual funds investing overseas came up to a roadblock. As we had explained at the time on these curbs on international funds, Reserve Bank rules limit the amount mutual funds as a whole can invest in foreign securities. The cap stands at $7 billion for all foreign securities other than ETFs and $1 billion for ETFs. That $7 billion mark was close to being breached. And so, SEBI directed international funds to close off fresh subscriptions until a new limit could be worked out with the RBI. Please read our earlier article on this subject to understand the background.

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silver ETFs
Categories
Aarati Krishnan

Do you really need silver ETFs in your portfolio?

These Silver ETFs intend to invest at least 95% of their assets in silver of 99.9% purity. They will benchmark themselves to the daily silver ‘fixing’ – a benchmark price published by the London Bullion Market Association, translated into Rupees.  

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