Subtext

This week on Its the economy, stupid, lower CPI and WPI inflation, trade balance, and more.

“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.

I think I’m financephobic. I abhor finance. Maybe not the field itself, just how it feels. I know financial decisions are important. I still find them revolting. The problem is that I’ve somehow gotten myself a job at Zerodha. India’s largest stockbroker. And I have no idea what I’m doing. In this series, I’ll try fixing my financial life and share what I learn with you.

In this edition, we take a look at outcome of RBIs Monetary Policy Commitee Meeting, Consumer Confidence Survey and diflation in China.

Simplified review of the interim budget.

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.

It’s that time of the year again. Everyone is scampering to invest in ELSS mutual fund schemes, NPS products, and insurance policies just to reduce their taxable income. And while buying investment products may be rather straightforward, insurance policies are anything but straightforward. Even if you’ve decided on a policy and made payment, it could […]

Dark patterns are everywhere, these are tricks used by applications and websites to make users do things they don’t want to. They rely on exploiting our behavioural biases and cognitive limitations. We all encounter dark patterns in our daily lives, like making it easy to subscribe but hard to unsubscribe, pre-selecting actions like purchasing insurance, […]

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 […]

Financial influencers or finfluencers have become incredibly popular in the last 4–5 years. While there are a lot of amazing people who teach people about trading and investing, there are many who sell greed and set the wrong expectations. SEBI recently came up with a consultation paper on regulating finfluencers. In this video, Nithin, Abid […]

  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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

It doesn’t feel like the end of 2021, but rather a long 2020 just ended. I was thinking of writing about a year-end personal finance checklist, but then I realized 2021 deserves a different kind of review given what we’ve lived through.  For the last couple of years, we’ve all been a bit like a […]

If you ignore the brutal bear market over the last one month, we’re still in a raging bull market. A lot of people think that the markets are in a bubble. I don’t know. I guess nobody knows. Talk of bubbles always reminds me of this tongue in cheek quote by Eddy Elfenbein: A bubble […]

Wishing you all a Happy and prosperous Diwali🪔 from all of us here at team Zerodha! This post got a little big because we wanted to cover some basic yet extremely important personal finance concepts. This was the first post that we wanted to write but there was so much other crazy stuff happening in […]

There’s nothing new that you can say about investing. The basics – save more, spend less, diversify, keep costs low, and don’t tinker with your portfolio have remained the same for ages. It’s just that we have to find new ways to keep saying the same old things.  And since most of you are probably […]

In the past year or so, we’ve seen a huge spike in new investors. While, in general, this new breed of investors are more informed than the previous generation, some of them continue to make the same old mistakes. At Zerodha, we spend quite a bit of time educating investors. We constantly share things and […]