Do it yourself

 Over the last weekend, I attended a lecture on the doctrine of Karma, read couple of books on philosophy of investment, and observed zillion of nuggets of investment advice, apparently written by highly successful investors and/or advisors, on my social media timelines. Admittedly, all this was quite befuddling for me. Everything, I read or heard caused an overflow of conflicting thoughts and emotions. I spent the entire Republic Day holiday in extricating the entangled thoughts. I am not sure, if I attained any degree of success in my endeavour. Nonetheless, I understood the following very clearly– (i)     Like any other Karma, the process of investing in financial products is personal to every individual. No two individuals will have exactly same investment plan – strategy, goals, process and outcome. The similarities between religion (morality, ethics etc.) and investment end here. (ii)    Investment advisory issued (free) to common public is mostly...

Continuing from yesterday (see De-institutionalization of household savings ) It is important to note that investors moving away from passive investing to active investing is not an India specific phenomenon; rather it is a global shift. For example, there is massive outflow of funds from equity mutual funds in US, while benchmark indices have been scaling new highs. This outflow of funds has coincided with the tremendous rise in "Robinhood" investors - people buying and selling stocks directly on discount brokerage platforms. As Sanjay Satapahty, a fund manager at Ampersand Capital, highlights "Trend of ETF was a megatrend over last decade and the reversal can have huge implications." ( see here ) In past five months we have seen some glimpses of the likely implications for the market, should the shift from passive investing to active investing sustains over a longer period. Since the market bottom in March 2020, the small cap...