Aaditya Chhajed, CA, CFA

I want to talk about the five things that virtually everyone I speak with is trying to achieve with his/ her money. Some people have only one of these goals. Some have two or three. And, not infrequently, I meet people who, with a little prompting, turn out to have a bit of all five. And since these five issues are the main emotional and financial concerns in my own and my family's life, I can effortlessly (and quite genuinely) spark a tremendous amount of empathy on this topic and so can you.  The Five Great Goals of Life are: The endowment of a long, comfortable, and totally worry-free retirement, with no compromise in lifestyle, and no real concern about ever running out of money. The need/ desire to intervene meaningfully in the financial lives of one's children , during one's lifetime, and/ or in the form of legacies. The ability to fund, in whole or large part, the education of one's grandchildren. The capability to provide quality care to parents in their later ...

Equity markets are fundamentally unknowable. If markets and/ or investments lent themselves to rational analysis in any significantly predictive way, somebody (or more properly, somebody's computer) would have perfected that analysis long since and would have taken away all the chips of everybody else at the table. This has not happened. And if it hasn't happened by now- with every computer nerd in the washing through his computer every recorded trade since the Assyrians swapped wheat to the Babylonians for bronze- it is not going to happen. The secret is: there is no secret.  No matter how much you know, you still can't prove what's going to happen in the future. And the more you try to prove what's going to happen, the more you put yourself in an obviously false position. Once again: no one can, with any precision, give knowledge of the future. The battle we fight is not one of knowledge vs. ignorance, but of faith vs. fear. Your belief system is your sword and yo...

Points to ponder while taking investing in equity: 1. Do you travel to foreign countries like the US, UK, Japan, Switzerland, etc.? 2. Do you send your kids abroad for education? Shouldn't you balance your equity exposure to Indian and Foreign stocks/ Mutual Funds/ ETFs/ FoFs?  Reasons for the globally diversified equity portfolio: 1. Reduces country-specific risk Country specific risk includes negative events such as  war,  drought,  political turmoil, etc. 2. Winners keep rotating Winners keep rotating frequently Predicting them in advance is impossible Reduce the risk of our investors losing out when the Indian stock market underperforms   3. Reducing Portfolio Volatility All stock markets do not always move at the same pace or same direction   Investing across countries helps to reduce the volatility of the portfolio Lower fluctuations in the portfolio which also helps in better good night's sleep 4. Wider choice Several world-class companies do no...