6 Ways to Help Grown Ups get their Finances in Order

Parents have started handing over thousands of pounds to their offspring in order to help them fly from the family nest; a process which is neither easy nor affordable in an era of post-Brexit inflation, high cost of housing, and university tuition fees. According to research conducted by experts, around 85% of parents have stumped…

How To Check If Your PAN card is Active or Not

You must have recently read in the news that the more than 11 lakh (1.1 million) PAN cards were cancelled because of evidence that people were holding multiple PAN numbers. It is illegal for any person to hold multiple PAN numbers and anyone doing the same can be fined Rs 10000 under section 272B of…

Warren Buffett’s Letters to the Shareholders – Berkshire Hathaway 2017

Berkshire’s gain in net worth during 2016 was $27.5 billion, which increased the per-share book value of both our Class A and Class B stock by 10.7%. Over the last 52 years (that is, since present management took over), per-share book value has grown from $19 to $172,108, a rate of 19% compounded annually.* During…

Losing the Losers Game – PFP Wealth Management

“The  first  panacea  for  a  mismanaged  nation  is  inflation  of  the  currency;  the  second  is  war.  Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists.” – Ernest Hemingway. “Recovery in sight, says departing Bank of England governor Mervyn King..” – The Daily Telegraph. In…

Why We Think We’re Better Investors Than We Are

From their earliest days, the loosely confederated research efforts that came to be known as behavioral economics spawned a large quantity of studies centered on securities investment. This was not because the field’s pioneers were especially interested in stocks and bonds, nor was the early research commonly underwritten by financial services firms. Rather, the hive…

Hedge Fund Titan Bill Ackman’s Surefire Bet Turns Into a $4 Billion Loss

A little over two years ago, William A. Ackman, one of Wall Street’s brashest and most self-assured hedge fund managers, was on top of the world. A billionaire before he hit 50, he was generating double-digit gains for his investors and raking in hundreds of millions in fees for his firm and himself. Hailed as…

Show Me The Money – Bill Gross

“School days” inexorably continue at the Gross household, not just because of grandchildren, but because of the necessity to teach my own kids the complexities and pitfalls of investing. As I get older, I fear I may unduly introduce them to a 1930s Will Rogers warning about losing money: “I’m not so much concerned about…

The Incredible Shrinking Universe of US Stocks – Credit Suisse

The U.S. public equity market has evolved dramatically over the past 40 years. This is important because the U.S. equity market is 53 percent of the global stock market as of December 31, 2016. The main feature of this change is a sharp fall in the number of listed equities since 1996, which was preceded…

Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast – GMO White Paper

I believe the markets are behaving like the White Queen. In order to make sense of today’s pricing, you need to believe in six impossible (okay, I’ll admit some of them are just very improbable as opposed to impossible) things. 1. Secular stagnation is permanent and rates will stay low forever. As we have argued…

Blood on the street

Finally after a lot of dithering, the global markets caught the sub-prime flu and what a crash it was. India was the worst performing market today. Almost 1400 points (7%) down in a single day. None of the stocks were spared. Every sector was in the red. Now is the time for bargain hunting. Whoopie….