Paper Assets | wealthymatters

Binary Options Trading

September 23, 2014 Leave a comment

wealthymatters Are you looking for a way to increase your money on the side? Perhaps you’re already doing pretty well in life: Your business is bringing in a fair amount of money, your stock market investments are doing well, you’re driving a very nice car and you’re even using a high end dating service. However, you know that complacency is the enemy. If you do not go out and work hard to maintain your success, it could fade. You want to keep making money in all possible avenues so that you can be more successful every year. If so, you should know about binary options trading.

Basically, this is a type of trading that works with the Forex, or foreign exchange, market. You can also trade with commodities, indices, and even stocks, but not as heavily. Most of it is centered around the exchange market, looking at the currency pairings and seeing how they move up or down in value when compared to one another. This is a multi-billion dollar industry, turning over far more money every year than the stock market, so you know that you can make money if you know what you’re doing. In fact, maybe you’re already active in forex trading. Read more of this post

Filed under Alternative Assets, Paper Assets, Theory, Tool Kit Tagged with asymmetric risk reward ratio, binary options, binary options trading, commodity trading, forex, forex trading, index trading, postaday, stock trading, win no matter what happens

Investing In Unlisted Shares

September 17, 2014 15 Comments

wealthymatters If you’d like to be part of the action and excitement of various start-ups, you can consider investing in unlisted shares. But there are a few challenges to overcome and difficulties to bear up to.

Since these companies are unlisted, very little financial information is available. Also, because there’s no formal platform to trade these shares, the demand-supply situation varies and the price at which deals are struck are a function of the quantity, demand-supply situation and the sentiment prevailing in the secondary markets.

Unlike listed stocks, the unlisted space has few brokers and trades are made through known sources.Often, a broker accumulates small lots of shares from employees who have earned them as ESOPs, or from investors who have bought earlier and are looking for an exit. Once the broker has a sizeable chunk of shares, typically worth more than Rs 1 crore, it’s offered to HNIs.

Unlike listed shares, where a holder can exit through the stock exchange, liquidity is poor in unlisted companies. You would have to look for an IPO or another buyer. Read more of this post

Filed under Paper Assets, Tool Kit Tagged with investing in shares, investing in unlisted shares, postaday, stock investing, unlisted shares

The Grim Side Of Foreign M&As

September 17, 2014 Leave a comment

Yes, there is the successful take-over of JLR by Tata Motors, but most of India Inc’s big-ticket overseas acquisitions in the past five to seven years have,eroded wealth. The reasons for this range from high leverage taken to acquire a company , adverse changes in business cycle, or simply , failure to turn around a loss-making unit.

Tata Steel-Corus

Tata Steel acquired Corus, four times its size, for $12.04 billion in 2006. The valuation was more than one and-a half times its initial offer and was paid mainly through debt. Eight years down the line, Corus hasn’t contributed much to Tata Steel’s earnings. The European business was loss-making till FY13 and has not yet shown strong signs of a turn around.

Hindalco- Novelis

Hindalco acquired Canadian company Novelis for $6 billion in 2007, making the combined entity the world’s largest rolled-aluminium producer. However, the high leverage, resulting from the acquisition and the slowdown in aluminium demand, post acquisition, have led to the company’s stock stagnating at the same level, adding nothing to its value. Read more of this post

Filed under Entrepreneurship, Paper Assets, Tool Kit Tagged with foreign acquisitions, mergers and acquisitions, mergers and acquisitions destroy share holder value, mergers and acquisitions gone wrong, postaday, stock investing

Loans Against Insurance Policies

September 16, 2014 4 Comments

wealthymatters The news that Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) of India has recently surpassed banks as the largest personal loan lender in India has turned the focus on insurance policies as collateral. Apart from LIC, other life insurers like ICICI Prudential Life and Edelweiss Tokio Life, and several banks, including the State Bank of India (SBI), ICICI Bank and HDFC Bank, offer loans against life insurance policies.

Loans are granted only against traditional policies that have life cover along with a savings element in them. Term insurance covers and unit-linked insurance plans cannot be pledged to secure loans against them.Policies must acquire surrender value -the amount you would get if you terminate the policy after a certain years -to qualify for loans. You must assign the policy in favour of the insurer to get a loan. Typically, insurance companies offer loans up to 85-90% of the surrender value. LIC charges an interest rate of 10%, to be paid every six months. Read more of this post

Filed under Entrepreneurship, Paper Assets, Tool Kit Tagged with collateral, LIC loan, life insurance policy, loan against LIC policy, loan against life insurance policy, loan from LIC, loans, no credit history, no credit verification, postaday, secured loans, surrender value

SIPs Don’t Guarantee Anything

September 2, 2014 Leave a comment

wealthymatters Equity can also underperform other asset classes in the long term, depending on your time of entry and exit.

Equity cult members believe that equity will provide ‘fabulous’ returns if you avoid timing and invest regularly through systematic investment plans (SIPs). But, if we analyse what the Sensex returns would have been after doing monthly SIPs on the Sensex for 10 years, this is not the case.

The chart to the left is annualised returns (CAGR) on 10-yr SIPs on the Sensex. For example, the first data point of 34.55% on 31-8-1994 means the CAGR of 10-yr SIPs (i.e. SIPs from 1984-94) and the last data point of 13.37% on 31-8-2014 means the CAGR of SIPs from 2004-14.Dividend yield on the Sensex is ignored because retail investors will be buying Sensex using index funds and the small dividend yield will be negated by the expense ratio charged by these funds.

As seen from this graph, there are times in the past 20 years (i.e. mostly between the bear markets of 2001 and 2003) when equity investors have actually lost money even after doing SIP on the Sensex for full 10 years.

This is not to say that equity is a bad asset class or SIPs are not beneficial but that SIPs only reduce volatility and no in way guarantee fabulous returns from equities in the long term.

Also see in how many years equities have not been able to give 10yr CAGRs of 10%.So now you know what to do when banks have FDs offering 10% or more over 10years.Same goes for bonds, especially of the quasi government variety.