Hornmerchant's BLOG

Yesterday a student doing some project on Mutual Fund Performance Analysis, reached out to me for sharing my inputs. While replying to her, I felt this is in fact the matter of the title of this article – Efficacy of Performance Analysis. For me, actually this is a frequently faced question or situation, though not in exact words; clients, prospects and DIY investors seeking ‘little help’ (is that ‘DIY’?!) want a hack of choosing winners by looking at past performance. Investment comparison portals kind of make it more attractive and look easy-peasy task by giving “Star” ratings to schemes based on past performance. I am just reproducing my reply letter to her. Dear Sister, The title of your project “ Performance Analysis of selected Mutual Funds as an Investing vehicle for an Individual ” itself,   and hence the set of objectives, is put together inappropriately. Performance analysis should not be the basis (at least primary or main basis) for Mutual Funds being inv...

First, is this a slow down and what are the indicators and signs? 1. GDP has fallen sharply to 5% (against normal 7-8% and ambitious growth rate of 10%+) 2. Automobile sales have sharply dropped 3. Unemployment rate has increased 4. GST collections growth rate (@6.5%) is declining and in some months of de-growth (decline) is seen against expected 10% growth rate. 5. Private sector wages are not increasing 6. Lot of negative news about banking and financial companies 7. Bank credit growth low for long and slowing down below long-term average Ok, there are enough signs but what are the reasons? Actually these signs are reasons for one another; i.e., they are interdependent. Ironically all these bad things started because of good things. I mean the root cause of these bad things are actually the good things that were done few recent years ago. Good policies and actions by RBI and government that disrupted the "business as usual", sown the seeds of slow down...

I was giving a lecture to final year MBA students. I asked them, what are the ways of earning money. Obviously they had lot of answers. But I asked why don't they think of money earning money? They obviously guessed that I was talking about 'investing' and they agreed, yes, that's also a way. Then I asked "between you and your money who will earn more money, say after 10-15 years from now?" Everyone said, they themselves will be earning more than their money, obviously as I guessed. Leave alone students, most people, including parents of many of the students, even with decades of work experience have a situation that they earn more than their money. So, most people 'vouch for the fact' that they are better earners than their money. That's because they worked hard for money and never let their money work hard for them! I can give you many examples. Many bankers working hard for banks save their money in Bank Deposits than buying shares of t...