Run away Mutual Fund Broker : Timesofmoney.com MF Service

Today I see this message on timesofmoney.com MF Service website :

Check the website : http://www.timesofmoney.com/mf/jsp/home.jsp?uiId=TomMf to see what they are saying.

You can imagine the fate of the Mutual Fund Investors with Timesofmoney.com. They are left with no choice but watch good portfolio at timesofmoney.com and sell their funds later when it reaches in profit or their objective is fulfilled. The Website no longer updates the latest NAV value.

This is pathetic customer service behavior by Times Group by saying "As part of our business strategy".

They need to be more sensitive to their customers. They should have at least have the NAV updates happening to make sure that the investors are not left with other methods to figure out their portfolio value in order to transact. Now the investors are left with following options :

• Maintain portfolio at Moneycontrol or Valueresearchonline
• Sell MF from timesofmoney at earliest opportunity
• Always do business with AMCs directly.
  
• AMCs have much better transition plans if they change their business strategy !

Do you have anything to say ?

cheers
Sandeep

Mutual Fund Investing / Personal Finance when Sensex is < 12000

I generally read http://www.valueresearchonline.com regularly to educate myself about Indian Stock Markets and especially Mutual Fund happenings. Read this story "Make Informed Decision". Nice thing to read about. In short what auther is saying that you need to be informed about whatever you are doing in the Stock Market specially as it moves faster than you think!. My strategy for current situation after seeing new Lows for Sensex today is :

• Stop reading http://www.moneycontrol.com : Yes please do that you will find tremendous simplicity in your life and also stress will be less :). Most of the stories are crap there and the opinions change every minute!
• Create a Networth Statement NOW : Yes do that today itself. In most cases you would be having 2-3 savings account and 2-3 credit cards, 1-2 loans, 10+ Mutual Funds and probably 20+ stocks !. To create a net worth statement and consolidate all this information will not take you more than 1-2 hours.
• Stop the SIP in Mutual Fund NOW : This needs to be done asap if not done already. I am not against SIP and also believes in the fact that the market needs not to be timed at all. But when fact is seen on weekly/monthly basis that with more negative news coming from global markets. Our Indian Stock Market is also in a downturn and Mutual Funds are taking the most beating here. So it is wise to stop the SIP now and start investing in the market little later when markets are seen stabalized(after some months of no -ve news or some months of +ve news!). If you are adventours it is worth buying Index Fund as it will go up sharply whenever market moves upword.
• Make some extra payment towards your loan : If you have not done this before. Start putting little more towards your home loan or car/bike loan now. This will help a lot in long term. There are lot of tools available on Internet to assess the impact of extra regular payments towards your loan.
• Do not take Personal Loan if you can avoid: This is not the time to take personal loans. Live life in simplicity and defer your decisions to buy something with personal loan if you can.

Update : Fully agree to what Koushik Gala is saying now at GalaTime : This too shall pass

What is your strategy ?

Related

• Invest in low cost no entry load Index Funds
• Mutual Funds for NRIs
  

Financial Freedom on Independence Day ! 15th August 2008

Happy Independence Day to all.

I still remember my days in K.V School when we used to go to school in white clothes for Flag Hoisting Ceremony. The special treat used to be Mooti Chur ke Laddoo !!

On this day I would like to bring an exiting topic. Which is Financial Freedom! I am not a Financial Adviser. I believe we can at least achieve financial freedom by taking small baby steps.

• Stop signing up for more credit cards
• Stop taking Promotional Offers on Financial Products in hurry
  
• Stop taking personal loans if possible
• Save and Invest : Remember that just saving is not enough. You must Invest in order to potentially increase your income and achieve financial freedom.
  
• Invest in Low cost Mutual Funds : This is interesting as investing in low cost means two things. Either you find a fund which is having less management fees and expenses or Invest in Index Fund. Just now I read this article "The Lost World" on http://www.valueresearchonline.com. Excellent article which talks about Investing in Index Funds and how they are in India Vs USA. But before you jump look at these figures(taken from http://www.valueresearchonline.com) :

Open Ended - Equity: Index - one Year Return
Fund	NAV (Date)	Returns(%)	Return as on
ICICI Prudential Index	41.37 (13-Aug)	5.44	8/13/2008
UTI Sunder	467.82 (13-Aug)	4.09	8/13/2008
Nifty Benchmark ETS	459.69 (13-Aug)	3.88	8/13/2008
Franklin India Index NSE Nifty	35.79 (13-Aug)	2.60	8/13/2008
Birla Sun Life Index	45.37 (13-Aug)	2.57	8/13/2008
Principal Index	31.80 (13-Aug)	2.20	8/13/2008
Franklin India Index BSE Sensex	42.56 (13-Aug)	1.91	8/13/2008
UTI Nifty Index	28.56 (13-Aug)	1.85	8/13/2008
Canara Robeco Nifty Index	23.93 (13-Aug)	1.61	8/13/2008
Tata Index Nifty A	27.45 (13-Aug)	1.58	8/13/2008

Note that with same benchmark of S&P CNX Nifty ICICI Pru Index gives 5.44% Yearly Return whereas Birla Sun Life Index Fund gives 2.57% :) This is what author Dhirendra Kumar of the article I linked above is trying to explain.

• Generate Passive Income : Well this is something needs more thought and planning. It is easy to say but not so easy to implment. I follow this blog regularly and here is one interesting post on Passive Income
  
• Start blogging your ideas: Its been more than 2 years I am blogging. It is good to put your ideas and thoughts on a blog. It helps you as well as others.
• Invest in Stocks directly only if you know :)
• Invest with Mutual Funds directly with AMCs: This step alone will start saving you 2.25% entry load :)
  

Enjoy Freedom and your holiday if you are in India !

Indian stock markets on Cruise Control !

Indian markets are on Cruise Control today 11th Aug 2008 !. It seems all negative news are dried up and bulls are back..really ? I don't know for now.

• Oil prices came down a bit.
• Inflation is stable! - well people are tired of listening to the same tune..
• Banks are gaining - ICICI, HDFC are up !
• Elections are not in near term at least
  
• Mutual Funds NAVs are rising slowly
• IT companies in India are still recruiting
  
• Websites say
  
• Markets yet to see worst slowdown
• They are still trying to predict level for Nifty and Sensex ! - same guys on TV will say don't try to time the market :)
• Real Estate prices are still high - I do hear that they are coming down - but not in reality!
  

With all these, what an average investor is supposed to do ? I don't have an answer. I still feel India will continue to grow and therefore need to be in the market to gain from it. But at the same time I will see stick to my strategy :

Indian Mutual Fund Strategy for coming months - Part I

We still need to more analysis in order to understand how to play in this market.

Invest Online with AMCs Directly, NRI too ! ..SAVE Entry load 2.25%

With SEBI giving directions to AMCs for not charging Entry Load to Investors when they invest directly with AMCs. I have been thinking of doing this for long time but lacking some initiative to do the same !. Well with markets performing not so well for time being. I though it is the right time to try this with at least 1 AMC to see if this really works.

With my best guess I thought ICICI will be the best AMC to start with. With my experience I know that the ICICI is one of the pioneer's in implementing Online services for its customers.

This post is only about how to start investing with ICICI Pru AMC for Mutual Funds. Once I find out about others like Kotak, Birla..I would post about that too. btw till now I have found only ICICIPru, Kotak and Birla offering Online Investment facility. SBI does too, but their process is not 100% online!. Sundaram has tie-up with HDFC, Kotak Securities and ICICIDirect. So that means you need pay entry load of 2.25% !

Steps to start investing online(Purchase, Switch, Redeem) with ICICI Prudential AMC are :

1. Goto https://www.icicipruamc.com/InvOnline/invest.asp
2. If you already have a Folio with ICICIPru(Means you had bought Mutual Fund from ICICIPru directly using manual method earlier) then the process simple and can directly goto Step 3.But if you have invested in ICICIPru Fund using ICICIDirect, Citibank, HDFC etc ..because then in that case the Folio is sought of protected and only can be updated by those brokers.
3. Click on Button "Existing Investor" and follow the form to Invest Online. Don't forget to select option "DIRECT" in the Form. ICICIPru AMC have tie-up's with most of the banks to transfer money using net banking.
4. For Investor's who are first time investing in ICICIPru AMC. Goto website https://www.icicipruamc.com/InvOnline/invest.asp.
5. Click on link "APPLY NOW"
   
6. Click on button "First Time Investor"
7. There are instructions on this page to follow. But for simplicity, as I have done this I will give the steps here - Assuming you are Investing in ICICI Prudential Index Fund !
1. Download the Common Application Form
2. Fill up the form carefully, specially the details of Fund, Cheque No, Bank Details, NRI Checkbox for NRIs etc
3. Write a crossed cheque of Rs.5000/- in the favor of "ICICI Prudential Index Fund" This is the minimum first time investment amount for ICICI Prudential Index Fund.
4. Take a blank cheque and cancel it. This is also an requirement for direct debit/credit for AMC. They need another cheque as a proof for MICR Code I guess.
5. Make sure you correctly write the IFSC(Indian Financial System Code) Code (This is printed on the Cheque normally)- This is required for RBI money transfer process.
6. Proof's to attach with application - Please go through the application form instructions.
1. Attested PAN Card Copy - If you are submitting the Form personally at the AMC, then you can show the Original PAN Card. For NRIs this is not a option, so you need to send an attested PAN Card Copy or Self-Signed would also do.
2. KYC Acknowledgment or Print out after verifying at CDSL Website
7. Verify all the documents and send by courier/post to the AMCs office in the City where your bank branch is located. This is important as they don't accept outstation cheques.
   
8. For NRIs, please make sure to use Registered Post. I used registered post from Singapore. It reached in 5 days to ICICIPru AMC.
9. The day your form reaches ICICIPru AMC, the first transaction is recorded and you get a Statement of Account in email !
10. Now you can create a ICICIPru Tracker Account to do Purchase/Switch/Redeem from ICICI AMC without any ENTRY LOAD :)
11. Steps to create the ICICIPru Tracker Account :
1. Goto ICICI PRUTRACKER Website
2. Follow the Activation process by having your Folio Number from account statement and a secret question!
3. IPIN is generated online and you can create a username/password with Prutracker.
12. Now onwards you can invest in all ICICI MFs without any entry load :)

The entire process for me took 8 days. Right from sending the Form and activation of Online account.

I will try to find out more about other AMCs and will post the steps for that too.

Happy Investing!

Indian Mutual Fund Strategy for coming months - Part I

I believe it is time to redefine the strategy for Mutual Funds for coming markets. I have been thinking about it for sometime now. I am not expert on this but I believe that one needs to experiment a bit in order to gain in this kind of market where nobody knows whether it is in bearish phase or bull phase !

For those who were lured by the Borkers/Agents/Advisors to invest in Indian Mutual Funds in last six months or in late 2007 must be thinking that this Mutual Fund boom is over. And one should not never invest it in again. Just get out of the current investment and go back to good old Fixed deposits ..that too with Nationalized banks only ;) :)

Well I have a different opinion here. There is no need to panic with markets or try to run away from it. Just because the bears are back and they are taking away your returns as never before :)

But at the same time having good strategy do helps. Here is mine.

• Stop all SIPs - Yes don't believe the Fund Managers and don't panic, but at the same time STOP SIPs for now
• Redeem all Funds with profits - If you are lucky and still have some profit left in your earlier investment, please redeem that NOW!
• STOP all Manual Investments - This is the most important point here. Many people have lost their profits just because they could not redeem the Funds as they were in a manual method. It was just laziness or ignorance which stopped them from redeeming E.g. Don't know what to do for redeeming, who is CAMSONLINE, Broker not available...etc
• Prepare Net worth Statement - You need to take stock of your investments as well as expenses and income at once. If you have never made a Net Worth Statement till date. Search on Google and you will find many sample templates for doing this stuff easily.
• Define Objective for Investments - If you had never done this. It is important that now we understand this concept of Investing with Objective and starting doing that. This will create lot of positive thought process in you - after going through this bearish phase - still counting though !
• Pay mortgage partly - If you have home loan or any other loan. Please pay little bit more than what you have been paying monthly as EMI. Not too long ago (2003-2007) advisors/brokers/agents used to say that invest first and pay loan later from profit. I believe we need to do both together to gain most.
• Start Online Investment with AMCs - In order to save 2.25% entry load, start investing with AMCs directly. Try do some research on this. Wait for few days and I will post something about it!

This is what I am doing for now. I will post more about how to plan the Investments in Mutual Funds and Stocks directly too in my Part II.

Happy Investing!

cheers
Sandeep

Related Posts

• Investing directly with Mutual Fund AMCs in India - Save Entry Load
  

Online Mutual Fund Services - be careful before you decide !

There is lot of trouble if you have taken account with Timeofmoney.com

They stopped BUY option from their website 3 months back. Now their website is out of sync for the NAV information. So you need to do look out for REAL NAV information in websites like http://www.valueresearchonline.com before you decide to SELL using their website ..well luckily the SELL option is still available !

So this is a good lesson learned for people who were looking for online options for MF services. So my recommendations would be :

• Go directly with AMCs - the biggest benefit is the Entry Load - I am yet to verify this !
• Better management of Funds
• You actually need 2-3 AMCs to cover all the BEST Mutual Funds
  
• Once you have done First Investment via the AMCs, they allow you to transact using their websites.
• Going with Banks and established portals like ICICIDirect, HDFC is better than choosing some Online Broker for your investments.
• I can't think of any other advantage at this point :)

Happy Investing !

HDFC Home Loan ...Excellent Online Transaction Services !

Recently when I got my HDFC Home Loan statement, I got to know that they have Online Services too :)

So went to the website http://www.hdfc.com and found out that they have excellent Online Transactions service for their Home Loan Customers. This is very good move by the bank. I am not sure which other banks have this service for their Home Loan customers, but this is very good. Mainly for NRI Customers where they need to get Income Tax certificates and other account statement online. No need to depend on the snail mail :) ..

Also the registration process is very simple. Just goto the web page : https://jogint0.hdfcindia.com/inet/ and provide your home loan account and create your online account with HDFC Home Loan. Immediately customers could login to the website and get all the required details for the Home Loan. Also there is a way to pay your Home Loan EMI via the website's secured payment gateway.

Only thing missing is the facility to pre-pay the home loan :) ..I hope they add that too in due course.

I know that ICICI Home Loan do have any such facility yet ...

Overall I like HDFC Bank. Their approach towards fairness in implementing policies is very good. Specially recently when one of my friend wanted to open Mutual Fund account with them. The relationship manager went out of the way to get the KYC done for the customer and activiated the MF account.

With all these nice things. They still need to more good job with their Interface design for the Online Mutual Fund web page! ICICI Direct is the best for the their Interface as well as providing all the Mutual Funds for subscription.

Mutual Funds for NRI Investors..Many questions !

I have been trying hard luck to do some mutual fund investment's of my own choice using Citibank. But it seems bank has decided its own way of giving choice of available Funds. They show all the AMCs but when try to select a Fund e.g. I wanted UTI Master Index. It is not available for me to select.

So I though I will email the realtionship manager to get the answer. The link does not work :(. So I am trying to search Google and trying to find if AMCs have any restrictions for NRIs to invest in particular funds only ? If it is ..is it listed somewhere by the AMCs on their websites ?

If anyone reading this blog happen to know the answer to above questions ..please help me understand !....this will help lot of people who are looking for a similar answer.

btw ..it seems ICICIDirect too allows mutual fund transactions online for NRIs...if anyone has experience with that ..please share ..

Update
After researching http://www.valueresearchonline.com for sometime I got to know that we can know about the Fund and its eligibility for NRI Investment. For example you can goto :

UTI Master Index

and then goto the "Fund Details" tab, there is a Eligibility column which tells who is eligible to invest and whether it is repatriable.

Now the question is why Citibank is not offering UTI Master Index but offering Birla Index ! ..As per valuresearchonline Birla Index has 3 stars whereas UTI Master Index has 5 stars. The only difference I could find out is the Expense Ratio and Management Fee is higher for Birla Index, apart from that the returns are almost the same. Which is expected for Index Funds in the same category and assuming similar tracking error.

Online Mutual Funds ...Customer service !

Today I receive a email from Timesofmoney saying that they are disabling the BUY option until further notice to enhance customer experience . The notice is given on 18th April 2008 . So now people who are using this service are stuck to go via the offline method the website offers ! ...

In this online world, I don't know how can a I company do this to their customers. They could have easily develop the enhancement(we as a customer don't what are the enhancements!) in parallel and do the switch when ready. This is a normal practice.

To me till date ICICIDirect seems to be the best in providing online mutual fund transactions. Their site provides access to all funds. There are many players in this online mutual fund portal business, but ICICI is one of the best in my opinion.

Lets see when this enhanced version of Timesofmoney.com comes LIVE !

Happy Investing !

Investment Strategies in 2008 !

I feel 2007 was very good year for Investments in Indian Stock Market. Mutual Funds rocked as usual. If you bought good stocks, they all benefited from the Bull run which was too good in 2007.

Looking back at 2007, specially considering the mutual funds. In my personal opinion one can apply this simple strategy to maximize gains or invest wisely in 2008. This are my strategies to simply life in 2008 !

• Do not invest in more than 5 Funds of your choice based on ratings from http://www.valueresearchonline.com
• Do not invest in NFOs ..Its not worth in long term even though it looks great sometimes - e.g. Reliance Equity
• Do not play short term in Mutual Funds. Keep at least for 2-3 years
• Do not sell for profits, sell only when you have your objective met e.g. Planned selling only for a objective
• Do not invest in Equity IPO's.
  
• Many will disagree with me but for a small investor investing somewhere between 50k to 1 lacs, its simply not worth the time and money. e.g. Investing 1 Lac in IPO, getting alloted only 10k worth of stocks, money locked for more than 1-2 months. Refunds are no managed well sometimes. e.g. For CENTRAL BANK IPO in 2007 for many investors, the registrar issuesed a cheque via Speed Post for the refund money:)
• Invest regularly using SIP method
• Invest in bulk in the same funds when you feel market has come down a lot(benchmark of MF NAV's need to be kept for that)

My favorite Mutual Funds

• Fidelity Equity
• HDFC Equity
• Reliance Vision or Growth
• Magnum Contra
• HDFC Prudence
  

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Mutual Funds Statements Online !

For all who riding the markets with Mutual Funds, this is a good post to read!..well I am not marketing ..but in a way this is called as cheap marketing :)

As you know that all Mutual Funds are processed either by the AMC or some other 3rd party processing company like CAMS. So these are the guys who send you the MF Statement every month for the AMC they work with.

I believe that 95% of the investors who get these statements every month, do not bother to check that & if they have invested in multiple funds it generates loads of statements every month + the extra trash at home !

So you have a quick solution now for AMCs which are doing business via CAMS.

Here is all you need to do to simplify your life :)

1. Visit the following link : Link to setup email delivery of MF Statements
2. Goto option : Statement Delivery
3. Fill up the following form on the web page :







3. Click on the "Submit" button.

List of AMCs working with CAMS is shown in the List : AMC Name.


I like this facility very much. CAMS also has an facility to provide online Consolidated Portfolio Report for all your investments in MF. That's in next post !

Enjoy !

Indian Market Crash..Sensex down 621 pts & Nifty by 187 pts

I was watching it. Sensex was down 621 points or 4.14% at 14,380.13 and Nifty was lower by 187 points or 4.29% at 4182.6. It is good for the investor to get a taste of this kind of volatility once in a while ! Helps us to understand that market always do not go upward(which many people thought that it does in last 2 years!).

I feel comfortable in investments in Mutual Funds only at this time. Remember ..do not panic and stop your SIP for MF. At the same time do not wait if you have cash which you do not need for next 3 years and you planned to put that in a MF today. Market timing is the last thing you want to guess :)

Some good reading :

Get rid of that hefty debt from your wallet
12 Things I Will Never Spend A Dime On - I like this one very much..very important to know where you really want to spend

Happy Investing !

Stock and Mutual Fund Recommendations by The Hindu

I got this good link today about some Stock and Mutual Fund Recommendation page by The Hindu.

I found the summary of stocks & mutual funds good. Specially a small description on what is the objective of the fund is a good idea. You can quickly glance through the summary & then also review it on http://www.valueresearchonline.com's Fund Card to understand more. Its a good start for someone looking for quick objective for the fund and some statistics. Obviously before starting an investment in Mutual Fund, please go through your objectives of investment in the equity market ;)

One more page to watch out :)

Happy Investing !

Fund Card on Valueresearchonline website

I noticed a new feature on http://www.valueresearchonline.com. It is Fund Card. Goto to the "Mutual Funds" and select any Mutual Fund of your Choice from the list on the first page. On the right side of "Relative Performance " there is a BIG Adobe PDF Icon which says "Download Fundcard". Click on that and you get a Fund Card of the Fund you are looking at.

Its a great tool to analyze the fund in which you want to invest. Provides good summary of returns over a period. Some charts to understand performance. History of expense ratio. Expense ratio is something I have started looking recently. I guess it makes lot of sense to read this kind of stuff once in a while to understand what your fund or fund manager is doing !

With my personal experience so far(last 2 years) ..I would recommend following way to Invest in MFs

• Invest in few Equity Diversified Funds only
• Do not expect great returns always !
• Do Invest rather than just saving the money(I will blog more on this!)
• Track your portfolio every 3-6 monhs
• Create a Net worth Statement & do update it every month(check out Build your own net worth calculator)
• Do not over-diversify(i.e. do not try to invest in too many funds)
• Understand your objectives of investing in Equity very well
• Do book profits if you need too !
• Do not book profits if you don't know what you will do with that money !
• Read blogs on Equity Investing !! - My favorites I will post later
  
• the list go on ....

I started investing very late in Equity & regret that time lost. Look at this handy Calculator to understand how you can benefit from compounding in long-term.

Indian Mutual Funds ..How to find SIP Return !!

With the market being volatile ..everybody talks about doing SIP with Mutual Funds than bulk inivestments. But sometimes its hard to understand & find what is the SIP return for a particular Mutual Fund in Indian Market ..

So here is the solution :

Note the URL : http://www.valueresearchonline.com/learning/CalcSIPReturn.asp
(For this above URL, you need to Login to www.valueresearchonline.com)

This above URL will provide SIP as well as Obsolute Return for a given fund for an AMC.

For Example :

Magnum Contra - Growth for Jan-2006 to June-2006 :

Annualised SIP Return over period : -3.31%
Non-SIP return(absolute) over period : 16.33%


Franlin India Prima - Growth for Jan-2004 to June-2006

Annualised SIP Return over period : 34.76%
Non-SIP return(annualised) over period : 31.72% (note the return here !!)

Again an caution that, do not go by the misconception that Obsolute return will provide more returns than SIP. This is only true for market which is having upword trend, which was the case for last 1 year ...not more it seems !!

So now you are more smarter to understand the SIP ;)

Indian Stock Market Swings

Disclaimer : I am not a stock market expert or Investment Advisor

The stock market in India seems to be swinging more than anybody could understand. In past 2 months since the market started bear phase(downturn), I have been observing following :

1.No or very less Ads in TV/Radio/News Paper on Mutual Funds
2.Investment Advisors have stopped giving recommendations !!
3.Everybody who invested recently(2-3 months back), lost lot of money :(

So it seems that people who where so bullish about the market, suddenly stopped talking about it :) ..Which is not a reality.

Equity Investments were always risky, just that in last 1 year it was too good to believe & everybody was jumping in it..thinking that it will be like this always :) .

So this recent crash has made people think more logically & re-look at their portfolio. I know people who exited after the crash..

I still feel that one should expect good returns in long term taking into account the short term risks sometimes. That way you are more reasonable & will not become emotional while investing you hard-earned money.

I was doing some research on some websites about the funds who performed better than others(that means gave less -ve returns !!) in past 2 months !!..Here some of them : Ratings are as per http://www.valueresearchonline.com

1. Sundaram Select Midcap
2. Magnum Contra
3. Magnum Global
4. HDFC Equity-G

The above funds which I listed above are on the TOP of my list !! ..Again these are based on my research as per current performance. I looked at the funds which are at least 3 years old & have out-performed the Sensex/Nifty even in the crash.

Earlier whenever Investment Advisor used to tell us that, do not expect mroe than 10-12% returns from Equity Market MF, I used to think how it can be .as we were all seeing the upword trend for long time :) ..But now everyone knows that its really risky in investing in Equity. So follow these guidelines always :

1. Only Invest if you have cash left with you which dont need for next 1 or 2 years
2. Investment with Mutual Funds with previous track record only
3. NFO's can be tried, but they are very risky times.
4. Always do you own research to understand what the Fund delivers & what's its Portfolio(Not all funds are same).
5. Diversify within Funds if you can
6. Last but not least : Invest some part through SIP for sure.

For past 1 market is again showing some continuous upword trend :) ..So its a good sign, but again watch out & be careful before investing...But do Invest if you can !!!