Prajna Capital - An Investment Guide

Trading in currency futures helps you speculate and hedge against daily market volatility. But you should be aware of the associated risks as well WORRIED over your investment growth in the light of volatile currency exchange rate? Put your fears aside. After a long wait, currency futures’ trading was launched on NSE (India’s largest stock exchange) at 8.45 am, on August 29, 2008. Currency future is a standardised futures contract with currency as the underlying instrument. Put simply, it is a contract or an agreement to buy or sell any currency at a specified future date before contract expiry date. For those who are new to futures trading, the key factor to understand is the leveraging character of the product and the associated risk. The currency movements in the last few months bear out the importance of having currency in your portfolio and how the futures platform, with the availability of the one-year contract, makes it possible. START HERE If you want to trade in currenc...

Investing money for short-term, say up to 1-11/2 years has generally been an issue. As it is the interest rates / returns are quite low. On top of this, there could be taxation issues, which will further reduce the effective returns. Equity/equity funds may not be a prudent option for short-term. Therefore, we need to consider mainly the interest-based investment options. What do we usually do? Since it is quite convenient, very often the money keeps lying in the Savings A/c itself (also, maybe it is psychologically satisfying to see a big balance in one’s account). But don’t forget - this earns you just 3.5% p.a. interest and that too taxable. Hence, it is not good to keep too much money in the Savings A/c. The next common thing to do is to make a Fixed Deposit ( FD ). This may earn you 6-9% interest depending on the tenure. But this too is taxable (if you are in the highest tax bracket, even a 9% FD will fetch you just 6.3% post-tax returns). So, given the fact that there are better ...

Book Losses before 31 March And Set Off Against Cap Gains For Next 8 Yrs, Advise Tax Experts ARE you sitting on unrealized losses from the recent downturn in the stock market? If the investments are less than a year old, you could put it to good use and lower your tax liabilities for the current financial year. Tax experts are advising investors to book their losses on or before March 31 this year and buy back those positions in the next financial year. By doing so, the tax on short-term capital gains (if any) can be set off to the extent of the short-term capital losses. Market watchers are expecting some sharp swings in many small and medium cap stocks over the next few weeks as investors try to balance their account books. Short-term capital losses for the year can be set off against any capital gains, short or long term, reported under the head, income from capital gains. In case the gains are lower than the losses, the excess short-term capital losses can be carried forward and s...

In this section an attempt is made to analyze and highlight the implications of Budget on common man under various heading. Home is where many tax saving options still dwell Buy a home, go for joint ownership if you are two salaried persons, buy a second property, or even sell the existing one...if you plan well, there are various options to save tax on hard-earned money THE Indian economy has been witnessing a boom in the recent past. However, rising property prices and growing interest burden on home loans are worrying buyers. The Budget has not offered any relief, but you can still make ample use of the existing provisions to save substantially on property investments. Here’s how…. BUYING A HOUSE Owning a house is not just a dream but a necessity, and there are several tax benefits as well. However, when buying a house, you would do well to consider the following. (a) It’s always advisable to go in for a housing loan. Interest paid on home loans can be deducted from your taxable in...

Its Feb 29 (leap year), that time of the year for the Indian government to come out with the union budget, and it did come out. So what are the positives and negatives? How will it affect you? Lets take a look its implications. Taxpayers may gain up to Rs 44,000 per year The adjustment for the income tax slabs has been done in such a way that people in the high income category stand to gain even more. The increase in tax slabs in undoubtedly great news for the salaried. The news gets even better for those in the higher tax brackets. The adjustment for the income tax slabs has been done in such a way that people in the high income category – say above Rs 2.5 lakhs per annum - stand to gain even more. To put this in numbers, a person who had a taxable income of Rs 5 lakhs would have be paying a tax of Rs 1 lakh – before any cess on his income in the income tax slabs that prevailed till now. However, under the new income tax slabs, his tax liability would come down to Rs 55,000 translatin...