Index investing
In 2018, I read a book called “The Little Book of Common Sense Investing’’ by John Bogle. The main concept of the book was that markets were efficient and it is difficult to beat it regularly as shown by poor performance of active mutual fund managers. So invest in a low cost index fund and beat most of the active funds due to low fees. I was very impressed by the narrative and started researching index funds in India.
I found that the nifty alpha low volatility index was the best performing index. No fund was available for that so I started my sip into the nifty next 50 index fund through my bank mutual fund. After one month I found that they had entered my details wrong. So I exited the fund and started researching again.
I found some negative facts regarding indexing. Only investors of US and India advice indexing. The reason being that these are the best performing index and the advisors are suffering from hindsight bias. Imagine advising a Chinese person in his 30s about index funds in 2004. After 20 years he has nothing to show for it. Active managers could have changed allocation and started investing globally like the advisors from Europe.
So if one is indexing he is actively betting on the country. There is nothing passive about it. Another idea is to add a global index fund but then it becomes more active, why not just invest in active fund with international exposure like Parag Parikh.
Mutual fund
I had invested in Reliance Small Cap Fund with good results. I got scared when the bear market came and only large caps were performing. So I exited and bought a debt fund.
Franklin India Ultra Short Debt Fund was the best performing one at the time. I used to watch Freefincal videos by @pattu at the time. He mentioned that the bonds the fund invested in were risky. I exited it just in time to see the fund collapse. I have not invested in any mutual fund since then.
Buy and Hold
My best returns came from buy and hold strategy. It was mostly due to the timing of investment during Corona peak. I could not hold my positions till now as I was in need of urgent funds and I was fully invested at the time. I will have to calculate and see if my returns would have been better or worse if I held my positions. Currently I am trying buy and hold but reading
Mark Minervini book, so may change strategy at some point.
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