You are better off doing dumb things when you are younger and have less money to lose than when you are older and have more at stake.
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Welcome to a story of warring Gods, the discovery of fire, the first woman ever – and what they all have to do with how you manage money.
Catastrophes are unlikely. And yet, unlikely things happen all the time. World War I shows how things can suddenly go horribly wrong.
Bull markets teach bad habits. Bear markets detoxify them. However good things look, a generational detoxification will eventually arrive.
We misunderstood 10 years of market behaviour. Valuations make no sense. Gold prices are absurd. China’s stuck. It’s an upside-down world!
On April 14, Iran attacked Israel directly for the first time, launching over 300 drones and missiles towards Israel. Israel and its allies intercepted almost all of the projectiles, preventing any damage. On April 19th, Israel retaliated with a limited attack on Iran. These tit-for-tat attacks have turned the already volatile Middle East into a […]
Robo-advisory services were the hottest wealth management trend of the last decade. Most died or were acquired in fire sales. What went wrong? This is a history of robo-advisors and why they failed.
We keep reading tons of interesting things, not all of which we share or write about. So, we figured, we’d share short summaries of what we are reading and tracking that you may find interesting.
Daniel Kahneman made finance more humane and investors more introspective. We all owe him a debt of gratitude for making us look inward.
A new shipping crisis may ripple through global trade. Houthi militants attack ships passing through the Red Sea, while the Panama canal experiences a disruption due to severe drought.
SEBI has directed AMFI to instruct all asset management companies to restrict inflows into international exchange-traded funds (ETFs). This post explains why these restrictions are imposed and what they mean.
“Investing is a problem that has been solved.” Dave Nadig, a veteran of the US ETF industry, said this on a podcast, and it has been stuck in my head ever since. I remembered this quote because I saw this poll on Twitter (Umm… X. What sort of name is that?). I’ve been thinking and […]
Over the years, whenever we asked people what aspect of their personal finances they struggled with the most, the common answer was insurance. So we decided to do an Ask Me Anything session with Shrehith Karkera, co-founder of Ditto Insurance. We collected the most common answers from people with Shrehith answering them in detail.
Once upon a time, I used to publish a fintech newsletter. It was pretty good, if I may be vain enough to say so. Once upon a slightly later time, due to unspeakable and mostly embarrassing reasons, I let the newsletter fall by the wayside. But we’re starting it again. My colleagues have promised to […]
2023 was an interesting year. Given the new year, it’s a good time to reflect on the year that has passed. We learn so that we can ignore the lessons and make the same old mistakes in unique ways.
A week ago, I read this disturbing story of a poor family of four that decided to end their lives due to harassment from loan recovery agents. The amount in question was just ₹9,300 borrowed from an illegal loan app. This incident reminded me of another depressing and unforgettable story that I had read some […]
99% of people reading this article will have two reactions: they’ll ignore it or think I’m a moron. So, why write? I don’t know; it’s an itch I can’t scratch. If you are on Twitter, you must have noticed the backlash against influencers of late. It started with the expose of some finfluencers faking P&L […]
You needn’t wait for your salary to celebrate!! Is shopping on your mind today? Get the funds you need, without any extra fee! Loan ke oopar extra loan! Cash of Rs X lakh is waiting for you!!!!!! These are examples of loan notifications on banking and payment apps I get almost every day. Everybody […]
One of my pet peeves with personal finance books is that investing gets all the attention. It’s not that investing isn’t an important part of personal finance, but beyond a point, it’s a giant distraction. There are bigger personal finance priorities than investing. Unless you’re an investing professional, spending more than a couple of […]
A recurring theme about financial crises is that people keep learning the same old lessons. The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) highlighted the lessons of proper cash management. To recap, Silicon Valley Bank was a favorite among startups due to its focus on providing banking for them. As venture funding exploded after the pandemic, […]
Happy Christmas and a new year in advance, everyone. What a rollercoaster this year has been for the markets. Given the war in Ukraine and the dramatic spike in inflation and interest rates, there’s been carnage in the growthy and most speculative segments of the markets. In the words of every sell analyst, the term […]
IndiaDataHub is an economic and financial data and insights platform. They are doing an amazing job not just aggregating data across numerous sources and also parsing the data to derive meaningful insights. It was started by Ashutosh Datar as a passion project and later evolved into a full-fledged platform. IndiaDataHub also publishes an annual publication […]
There was a lot of noise on social media over the past few days after a crypto platform recommended by some influencers suspended withdrawals. I don’t want to delve into the issue, a lot has already been said and written publicly. But the whole episode highlights just how influential these influencers have become. Monkey see, […]
The sad reality of financial services is that good financial products like term insurance are sold the least, and horrible products like endowment policies and ULIPs are sold the most. There’s an old saying, “there’s no product a high commission can’t sell.” The one or two stories of mis-selling out of the hundreds that get […]
Like we’ve alluded to multiple times in the past, without a vibrant advisory ecosystem of advisors and distributors, there’s only so much the Indian markets can grow. Sure, the investor base has grown quite a bit in the last couple of years. But if the markets have to continue growing, we’ll need lakhs of advisors […]