There are funds which, while having the potential to give higher returns in the long term, also carry the baggage of high volatility. These particular schemes tend to remain in losses in the short- and even medium-term – that’s longer than some of the other funds – because of aggressive investment strategies. As a result, such schemes are good only if you have the ability to see off the negative returns in your portfolio for a fairly long time. In …

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United States of America

The Consumer Price Index (CPI) for November declined by 1.7% mom, the decline was higher compared with the drop of 1.0% in the previous month. The steep m-o-m decline in the consumer prices indicates the possibility of deflationary situation in the USA.
The initial jobless claims for the week ended December 2007 increased to 573,000 compared with 515,000 in the previous week. The factory orders for October declined by 5.1% yoy as compared with a decline of 3.1% …

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… Continued from PART 1 & PART 2 of the series …

@ Banking

The credit growth as on November 28 has jumped up to 29.8% yoy, the highest in the past one year. The credit demand has grown mainly on account of the drying up of the alternative sources of funds due to which corporates are turning to banks for meeting their working capital requirements. The deployment rate (i.e. the credit-deposit ratio) declined to 73.2% while the incremental credit-deposit ratio …

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… Continued from PART 1 of this series …

@ Equity markets

During November, the benchmark indices (BSE Sensex) corrected by ~7.0%, followed by an increase of ~8% during the month-to-date period (December 01–15), negating the decline in the previous month. However, the volatility in the equity markets has taken its toll on the volumes, which continued to decline in the same period. The volumes in the F & O continued to decline while that in the cash market remained largely stable …

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@ Overall Economy

India’s trade deficit stood at USD10.5 billion in October 2008 compared with USD10.6 billion in the previous month. Though the trade deficit is up by 61.2% yoy, the same remains largely flat on a m-o-m basis. With this, the year-till-date trade deficit has now widened to USD75.8 billion from USD45.5 billion in the comparable period of the previous fiscal.

In October, the country’s industrial production declined by 0.4%, the lowest in the past 15 years. This was well below …

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Despite several banks cutting their prime lending rates (PLR) recently, existing customers have not been benefited from this. Even after a month of the rate cut, a majority of home loan borrowers under floating rate schemes found out that banks including SBI, PNB, and IDBI Bank, have not passed on the rate cut to their existing customers. This benefit remains applicable to new borrowers only!

When interest rates were increased, all banks promtly increased the rates for both, existing and new …

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First Time in India - an Index fund tracking the Broadest Index in India

Scheme Highlights:

Ideal for Long Term Core Equity Portfolio
Exposure to total Indian Stock market in one investment (The Index Represents 92.61 % of Total Market Capitalization of NSE as on October 31, 2008)
The Scheme is a ‘Total Stock Market Index Fund’ that eliminates the risk of individual stocks, sectors, Styles, individual fund manager etc i.e all ‘Unsystemic risks’ only the ‘Systemic’ or market risk remains, which is common …

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