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Reliance Mutual Fund (part of Anil Ambani’s empire) had recently converted a couple index funds (Sensex and Nifty trackers) into a single “quant fund.”  Since I’m a hugh believer in Index funds, it’s a disappoint to see Reliance shutdown that investment strategy…but its business.
The new strategy has been running since mid April and to make [...]

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Back in December 2007, Lotus India Mutual Funds launched India’s first “quant fund” called the Agile Fund.  I use the term “quant fund” lightly when talking about Agile because it’s really an equity mutual fund dressed up.  Most people would agree that a typical “quant fund” selects securities based on quantitative analysis, in agile they do [...]

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Watching the Indian financial networks lately is better then watching the latest comedy flick.  The talking heads are just trying to say something positive but the reality is there is nothing to say. My favorite was on Friday when an HSBC analyst said “inflation could hit 15% but growth should not be impacted much.”
Are you kidding [...]

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The Sensex was down over 515 points today to hit a low for the year - 14571.29.  The reason for the bearish performance was inflation, the gov’t announced inflation was 11.05% a 13 year high mainly on the back of increased gas prices.
But the fun doesn’t stop there, several people I’ve spoken to are putting their [...]

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I just raced through the latest book from Satyajit Das titled “Traders, Guns and Money” and you would think it was a year in review on the global financial markets…WRONG.  The book was penned in 2006 and describes his last 25 years in the derivatives market which happens to be what is ailing most investment [...]

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At last the Securities & Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has agreed to allow Direct Market Access (DMA) which will facilitate wire speed Straight Through Processing (STP) on the exchanges. If the previous sentence is as difficult to understand as Kevin Federline’s role in life then you may want to pass on this blog [...]

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Although at the moment the financial markets seem okay, there is still an undertone of pessimism. When thinking of the current mess in the markets, one of my favorite quotes that comes to mind is from the movie Boiler Room…
“And best of all kids, I am liquid.” - Jim Young (Ben Affleck)
Unfortunately, that’s [...]

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Bear Sterns the 5th largest investment bank cracked under the credit crisis that is affecting the financial markets, it got help from the Fed and JP Morgan. It started with rumors early this week about “some bank” filing for bankrupty. Then on Wednesday the CEO Alan Schwartz got on CNBC and said “everything was [...]

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In a major ding for the Indian equity markets, the planned IPO for Emaar MGF was withdrawn from the markets on Friday near the close of the market. Emaar MGF had blanketed the country with advertising highlighting all the projects they did, that is Emaar did in Dubai. And that’s the issue, [...]

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The amount that Soc Gen should have told analysts was due to write-off’s related to subprime loans. Instead Soc Gen CEO Daniel Bouton insisted the USD 7.14 billion fraud was due to a single trader using “plain vanilla” hedges on European stock-market indexes, whatever.
Personally, if they would have said subprime losses it would have sucked [...]

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