Prajna Capital - An Investment Guide

Best SIP Funds to Invest Online   Invesco India Growth Fund is now called Invesco India Growth Opportunities Fund Given the recent volatility in the stock market, it makes sense to stay with large-sized companies showing healthy earnings growth, thanks to their long-established presence in the organised part of the economy. One of the funds that understand this strategy well is Invesco India Growth Fund, managed by Taher Badshah and Amit Ganatra. Invesco India Growth Fund , which could be categoried as an all-weather equity fund, takes the bottoms-up approach to investing, and the fund managers believe in taking controlled risks. With respect to the benchmark index (S&P BSE100 ), the fund managers are up to 50% overweight on a sector or underweight. There is no deviation from this norm. Another factor that explains the fund managers' strategy is to accommodate companies based on growth and value themes. This protects severe downside during declines. The fund managers choose st...

Best SIP Funds to Invest Online   It seems counter-intuitive that you can avail house rent allowance as well as deduction for your home loan. Here are some circumstances in which you can For some people, the tax-planning season has just started. You know that house rent allowance (HRA) and the deduction related to home loan repayment can lower your tax liability. You will be pleased to know, in certain cases, you can avail tax benefits from both of these. Here's how: HRA and home loan HRA exemption can be claimed under section 10(13A ) of the Income-tax Act, 1961. To calculate this exempted amount, lowest of these three is considered: 1) Actual HRA received from the employer, 2) 50% of salary if employee lives in a metro city; and 40% if the employee lives in a city other than a metro, and 3) actual rent paid minus 10% of salary (basic plus dearness allowance plus turnover-based commission). Home loan tax benefits are calculated in a different manner. In case of a home loan, the d...

Best SIP Funds to Invest Online   Aditya Birla Sun Life Top 100 Fund is now called Aditya Birla Sun Life Focus Equity Fund How has the Aditya Birla Sun Life Top 100 Fund performed?   With a 10-year return of 10.2%, the fund has outperformed both the benchmark (6.1%) and the category average (7.7%) by a wide margin.   The fund has comfortably beaten both the index and its peers over the past decade.   Aditya Birla Sun Life Top 100 Fund  has been a consistent outperformer for many years under its current fund manager. It is undergoing a transformation, taking on a more focused approach instead of a diversified startegy. It will remain a true-to label large-cap offering, but will be distinct from its larger sibling, Aditya Birla Sun Life Frontline Equity, which is a diversified fund. Accordingly, the fund portfolio will become more compact, with the fund manager taking larger positions in high conviction bets. It will also retain higher flexibility to deviate from its benchmark index at ...

Best SIP Funds to Invest Online   Franklin India High Growth Companies Fund is not Franklin India Focus Equity Fund A large number of big-sized companies clocked double-digit revenue growth in the December 2017 quarter. This could be a good starting point for savvy investors to enhance their exposure to large companies through a schemes that not only focus on large-sized companies, but also believe in value investing. Franklin India High Growth Companies is one such scheme which is value conscious and selects companies that are likely to deliver earnings growth higher than the market. Fund managers Anand Radhakrishnan, Roshi Jain and Srikesh Nair follow key valuation parameters, such as enterprise value, price-to earnings growth ratio, forward price-to-sales ratio and discounted earnings per share in selecting companies for investments. Taking into account these valuation parameters, the fund managers invest in companies which are poised for high growth in their sectors. The scheme has...

  If you are continuing to pay equated monthly instalments (EMIs) on a home loan and wondering if it makes sense to repay the principal rather than continuing it, keep in mind these three checks before making a choice. As a thumb rule, continuing a loan makes sense if your interest rate is lower than the potential return on investment for the lump sum. Let's say, you have Rs10 lakh left to repay. If you use this for repayment, you save on an annual interest cost of say 8.5%. Now, if you don't repay the loan, you can invest the Rs10 lakh in other securities. If there is an investment opportunity where you can earn more than 8.5% per annum, assume 10%-it will make more sense to utilize the corpus towards the investment rather than repayment. By doing so, your net result is a gain; in this case, it's an annualized gain of 1.5%. You earn 10% on the corpus and utilize 8.5% out of that for the EMI; rest is yours. By repaying the loan in full, you miss the opportunity for higher ...

Best SIP Funds to Invest Online   Canara Robeco Emerging Equities Fund scheme seeks to generate long term capital appreciation by primarily investing in diversified mid cap stocks that have a potential to emerge as the bigger corporates with higher performance. For the Purpose of this fund, mid & small companies are defined as those which are ranked from 151 to 500 on the basis of market capitalization. Consistency over time, rather than an ability to trounce the category, has been the hallmark of this fund, which has hovered between a three and four star rating for nearly seven years now. Canara Robeco Emerging Equities Fund is a sector-agnostic fund which looks out for opportunities across sectors with a bias towards mid-caps. Its attempt is to identify companies which have the potential to become leaders of tomorrow in their respective sectors. It uses a growth-at-a-reasonable-price approach to pick companies which show consistent earnings growth higher than that of the market. ...

There are hosts of insurance products available to meet such needs. Equally important is the amount of sum assured. Unlike developed countries, most Indian don't pay much attention to having an adequate insurance cover.  Individuals need insurance to protect them against the risk of dying early, risk of living long, risk of surviving a dreaded disease, risk of living with total and permanent disability, risk of high medical expenses, so on and so forth. There are hosts of insurance products available to meet such needs. Equally important is the amount of sum assured. Unlike developed countries, most Indian don't pay much attention to having an adequate insurance cover. As per the available public data, life insurance accounts for only 19 per cent of total household savings. Further, life insurance penetration in India is merely 2.72 per cent compared to 3.74 per cent in Asia and 3.99 per cent in Europe. Globally, the average rate of life insurance pe...

Best SIP Funds to Invest Online   Arun Jaitley did not tinker with the income tax slabs nor did he raise the exemption limit in Budget 2018, but there were a few proposals that will have an impact on how much taxes you will end up paying. Here are 10 income tax changes that will come into effect from April 1, 2018, once the Finance Bill is passed by the Parliament. Re-introduction of standard deduction In a relief to the salaried class, the FM has re-introduced standard deduction of Rs 40,000 from salary income. Apart from salaried class, even pensioners will be allowed to avail the benefit of this deduction. Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) Chief Sushil Chandra has clarified that to avail this tax benefit one would not be required to submit any proofs or bills, it can be claimed straightaway. Transport allowance and medical reimbursements to become taxable While standard deduction has been reintroduced, the tax benefit available on transport allowance and medical reimbursements h...

Best SIP Funds to Invest Online   Investors today are faced with a plethora of options when it comes to investing in Mutual Funds. Picking funds is often a hard task as there is a sea of information available to investors and the sheer number of funds to pick from can make the task seem daunting. Many investors tend to rely purely on historical short term performance to make investment decisions, which to our mind can be misleading. For starters, historical performance may or may not be repeatable in the future. Secondly, it is important to ascertain the attribution of the performance—is it due to the fund being invested in specific segments of the market that have done really well? Or is the performance more broad-based across stocks and sectors? The latter would suggest a more repeatable performance going forward. SIPs are Best Investments as Stock Market s are move up and down. Volatile is your best friend in making Money and creating enormous Wealth, If you have patience and long t...

Now Birla SunLife Balanced 95 Fund is called Birla SunLife Equity Hybrid 95 Fund   In a situation where interest rates are falling and some signs of recovery in earnings are evident, experts often suggest investors to be with balanced funds that offer exposure to equities as well as debt. In the balanced category, Birla Sun Life Balanced scheme, managed by Mahesh Patil, Dhaval Shah and Pranay Sinha, is the oldest and has distinguished itself as a consistent performer. Birla SunLife Balanced 95 Fund invests 60% of the portfolio money in equities and remaining in debt instruments. On the equity side, the scheme's fund managers invest in companies that are large in size and are well-established in their respective sectors. A few prominent companies in the portfolio include Dabur, Kansai Nerolac Paints, Pidilite Industries and Dalmia Bharat. On the debt side, the scheme is invested in government bonds, which provide a reasonably good safety cushion. In the past threeand five-year p...

    Rising uncertainty about improvement in demand across key sectors has made it difficult to find interesting ideas for investments. Given this, it makes sense to be with schemes which invest in multi-cap schemes which have high focus on large-sized companies. One such scheme is Franklin India Flexi Cap Fund. One of the key factors which distinguishes the scheme from its peers is consistency in its performance. The scheme's fund managers, R Janakiraman, Srikesh Nair and Lakshmikanth Reddy, have maintained its performance by being conscious about valuations. Besides, they adhere to the fund house's philosophy of choosing companies with strong business models, competitive advantages in their respective sectors, and quality management. The managers are also open to selecting companies which may seem out of favour but perform well in the long-term. But the criterion of valuation is not sacrificed or compromised for short-term performance. In the past six months, they have bough...

Start Saving for Tax 2018 by Investing in ELSS Funds Online HOW HAS THE Mirae Asset Emerging Bluechip Fund PERFORMED?   With a 7-year return of 25.08%, the fund has outperformed both the category average return (18.04%) and benchmark (13.4%) by a wide margin.   Growth of Rs 10,000 vis-a-vis category and benchmark   Mirae Asset Emerging Bluechip Fund   is a mid-cap oriented fund continues its stellar run, clocking another year of outperformance over benchmark and peers—a feat it has achieved every year since inception. The fund manager plies a strictly bottom-up approach to stock selection and keeps risk contained by focusing on larger mid-caps. A year ago, it had stopped accepting lump sum investments and now the fund has also put restrictions on SIP investments—only allowing SIP on the tenth of every month with an upper limit of Rs 25,000.   It has done so to preserve its return profile in the face of mounting inflows and stretched valuations in the mid-cap space. This step should hel...