My Sri Lanka Trip in brief. Cost was ₹1.5 lakh for 11 days.

Some of it in luxurious hotels, half the price of Indian ones.
Some of it in Airbnbs.
Took trains & buses, where possible

More than the money, look at the beauty of the island in the thread livemint.com/money/personal… 6 reasons to go:
1) Colombo's train by the sea

Each week, I divide my time between Pune (my home) and Mumbai (for work). After some struggles, I've given up on renting in Mumbai. I go for Airbnbs and hotels instead.

Among hotels, I love old Colaba hotels the best. Beautiful, somewhat affordable and have bygone era vibes. So here are 3 of my favourites. (Around 5k per night). If you have more suggestions, please reply in the comments.

1. The Sea Green Hotel - At one time, quite prestigious. Now, seems almost forgotten. Sits right on Marine Drive. While booking ensure you get a sea facing room (I forgot to do this) 2. The Strand (near Radio Club). Large rooms and a nice rooftop restaurant (Harbour view). Breakfast is generally included in your room fare.

A version of the finance bill circulating on social media proposes to end LTCG on #debt mutual funds bought after 1 April 2023. Meaning regardless of holding period, you pay tax at slab rate! Currently after 36 months, you pay 20% post indexation. It is a body-blow to debt funds. Why? Because yields on debt funds are similar to bank FDs, not higher. Without the favorable tax treatment, the case for debt funds almost goes away. I say ALMOST because some benefits still make debt funds marginally better for some people

Health insurance is sold on fear. Don't panic. A standard 5 lakh policy is well above the avg claim today. This was 70k in 2018-19 which we can extrapolate to around Rs 1 lakh at present. A small share of claims (0.1%) were above Rs 5 lakh in 2019-20. There are however reasons to buy a higher cover today.
1)After 15 yrs, inflation alone will render a 5 lakh cover inadequate. Buying more insurance at that time will be hard. Premiums shoot up with age. You may also get lifestyle diseases like diabetes - meaning less or no cover

I got a lot of replies and counterarguments to this, so I'm just going to add a few crucial points, on why you should NOT buy this type of insurance plan (in fact ANY kind of life insurance, except term insurance.

https://twitter.com/ActusDei/status/1633998920224219136

First, flexibility. In insurance you sign up for a multi-year payment plan. Next year you could lose your job or you have some stress in your finances. Your agent will still ask for the premium. Surrendering a plan attracts huge charges. This is a major issue in insurance.

3 year ago, I wrote about Bank of India Credit Risk Fund's terrible performance. What I didn't know was the Sebi was investigating its head of operations for withdrawing his own investments in the scheme, before the NAV crashed. Sebi's order was released yesterday Essentially, this scheme launched in Feb 2015. It's risky bets had done well till Aug 2018 when the CAGR was 9.5% and it had an AUM of about Rs 1,700 crore. After IL&FS crisis erupted, things started looking shaky. It seems the ops head had redeemed his investments by March 2019

What would you do when your annual income crosses Rs 1 crore? Shipra Singh spoke to young Indian professionals who actually have an annual income above Rs 1 crore, to find out. Middle class habits do not change overnight. Bengaluru based Rohan Chandrashekhar still drives a hatchback worth Rs 7 lakh and shops online from mid-segment clothes brands. Ghaziabad based Shubham Garg said he upgraded to a bigger home, but his lifestyle hasn't changed much.

Amit makes some excellent points. Unfortunately lack of a proper central database forced us to rely on PMS Bazaar, which has a fairly decent reputation in the market. APMI, the PMS body is supposed to get this sorted. Until then, we used the best available info in the market.

https://twitter.com/amitmantri/status/1630528866820448256

I respectfully disagree with the timing issue and PMS having more exposure to small cap. We have focused on 3 and 5 yr - long enough and the best we can do with the patchy data out there (ideally we would've liked rolling returns

We have a SPIVA report for #mutualfunds, but what about PMS? Using data from PMS Bazaar, Mint has done a similar study. In most categories, less than 50% of PMS strategies beat their corresponding #mutualfund category. To that, add the unfavourable taxation(tax on booked profits) There isn't much of an argument for investing in Portfolio Management Services. They have largely grown over the past few years on the back of hefty fees and expenses. This is slowly changing. #Sebi banned upfront commissions in PMS and introduced direct plans only in 2020.

Apparently there was a feeder fund investing in US debt launched by Franklin in 2003 and shut in 2010. Its mandate was to invest in Government National Mortgage Assn (Ginnie Mae) pass through securities. According to Value Research its return wasn't great Does that mean the new IDFC Fund will also meet the same fate? I don't know. It was a different time, a different AMC and different securities. We cannot draw parallels, simply based on one commonality - US bond market.

Yesterday's #Sebi paper highlights a troubling trend with REIT and InVITs. Quick recap, a REIT pools money to invest in commercial prop. InVIT does same for infra projects. Problem? The sponsors can take long term debt on these entities while selling their own stake after 3 years REITs can raise debt up to 49% of their assets (70% for InVITs). This debt is generally used to buy assets from the sponsor only. So, say builder A creates a REIT, sells the REIT its projects (by loading up debt on the REIT) and then quietly makes an exit. Entirely possible.

At the #ARIA conference. ARIA is the Association of Registered Investment Advisors of India. Sebi Whole Time Member @ananthng speaking #investing Says Sebi not looking to disintermediate brokers with regulations such as upstreaming money to clearing corporations. Huge client funds lying with brokers is a risk.

It takes one 'killer idea' to make history. Next month, @IDFCMF is all set to unveil one such idea - India's first US bond fund. Why is it so revolutionary? 3 reasons. First, when the US Fed hikes rates, everything (stocks, bonds, gold) goes down. Only the yields on US treasuries go up. But for Indians there was no straightforward way to benefit from rising treasury yields. From next month, there will be.

Why don't Indians invest in municipal bonds? Municipalities collect property tax and have projects to finance. Our lives are also a lot more affected by municipalities rather than the Union govt. It is they who collect garbage, supply water and keep the roads clean (in theory). Quite simply, until Indore Municipality came out with a public issue on Feb 14th 2023, municipal bond issues were few and far between. They were also 'privately placed' - offered to select investors. The minimum face value (until Oct 2022) for private placement was Rs 10 lakh.

Why are savings rates stuck at 3.5%? Despite being deregulated in Oct 2011, banks have stuck to 3.5-4% over the past decade. Some exceptions existed such as Kotak Mahindra's 811 account which offered 6% in 2017 and 5% from 2018-2020. But these have also disappeared over time. In today's era of rising rates, this is a free lunch for banks. The lunch was a tiny snack in 2020-21 when rates were cut. Moving money to an FD wasn't that rewarding. You got maybe 1-2% more. Today, that free lunch is a buffet. Savings rates are half of FD rates of even 1 year.

In 2019, fintechs such as @getStockal , @Vested_finance and @INDmoneyApp spotted a gap. They realized Indians wanted to participate in the US tech story by buying stocks like Apple and Alphabet. @Shiprasorout's story today talks about what the 20% TCS means for them. Indian market was in doldrums after the 2018 IL&FS meltdown while the Nasdaq was booming. So the fintechs used tech to democratize investing through India's Liberalized Remittance Scheme (LRS). Middle class investors were now able to enter a domain of the rich - global investing

Today @jashkriplani writes about the train-wreck that is the Nifty Next 50 after the #HindenbergResearch report on #Adani. The Nifty Next 50 collapsed last month. Even 5 year returns are just 5.4% CAGR. As much as 14% of the Nifty Next 50 is in the Adani Group Nifty Next 50 is 'waiting room' index. It consists of the 50 largest companies just below the top 50. Logically, investing in it should be more rewarding than investing in the main Nifty index. But that's not how returns have played out.

A goliath is about to enter India's start-up space - @hdfcmf. It is launching its first AIF with a size of around Rs 3,000 crore (including greenshoe option). This is an FoF meaning that it will invest in other funds (which will in turn be investing in startups/unlisted cos) HDFC AMC has already started accepting money and expects to close sometime in March. The fund will have a life of 11+2 years - the additional 2 years can be used after approval from investors. The fund will charge a 2% management fee and 20% performance fee for direct investors.

An aunt of mine suddenly was pitched an MLD today. She had no idea what it was and thankfully asked me. I told her the whole story. After #Budget2023 tightened the tax rules on MLDs, HNIs and wealth managers are on a selling spree and agents are reaching out to retail investors. Quick recap. MLD = Market Linked Debenture. A bond with a notional market linkage (eg: to Nifty). In reality MLD is structured just like any standard corporate bond. It is an instrument that uses a loophole in the Income Tax Act to give fixed income to rich people

Yesterday Sebi released several discussion papers to tame the last wild west frontier in wealth management - Alternative Investment Funds (#AIFs). Why? What has Sebi proposed? The lack of regulation was pushing the industry to sell AIFs and collect high commissions rather than highly regulated mutual funds. 4-5% upfront commissions in some cases

As usual, the real meat in a budget is hidden in the budget documents. For India's investors Budget 2023 has a number of such provision. Let's have a look: 1) No exemption on proceeds of insurance policies with premium more than 5 lakh. ULIPs already had 2.5 lakh cap since 2021