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Of the 49 sectors we track, telecom services and real estate have been the best performers over the past three months. As for the future, telecom will continue to do very well. Nobody knows where real estate is headed "India’s real estate market is in pain. The consensus is almost unanimous...

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The mid-cap index recently made a new high before the Nifty did. There is a lot of talk of investing in small-cap stocks. There is even a fund planned for micro-caps. But where are the largest funds laying their bets? On an average, almost 49% of fund money is devoted to mega-cap stocks...

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What makes this market tick? “Cheap money”, continued economic growth, excellent corporate performance and global interest in emerging markets. So, will stocks head higher over the next six months? Yes. By how much? That is the hard part. Stock prices discount the future. They...

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Today, India is hailed as an emerging power -- a force to reckon with. It is easy for us to be confident of ourselves, our technological prowess, and our emerging economic status. But in the 1940s and 1950s, when we were trying to find our feet as a fledgling nation, with even food security...

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In our previous issue, we pointed to a major scam at Stock Holding Corporation of India being perpetrated by the top management right under the nose of nominees of major financial institutions like IDBI, ICICI and, of course, regulators Securities and Exchange Board of India and Bombay...

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In this issue, our columnist R Balakrishnan writes about how savvy consumers can take advantage of the forces of competition and beat down the insurance premium to be paid on their vehicles. The opposite side of this story is the manner in which insurers are taking gullible or ignorant...

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Demergers have been great opportunities for shareholders to make money. Indian companies have invested through cross-holdings and subsidiaries in a variety of businesses and when these businesses have been spun off, they have created huge value for shareholders. The best example is the...

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A very important aspect of business etiquette is ‘be punctual, be on time’. Jag Yager, guru of business etiquette, places it as No.1 among the six elements of business etiquette. In India, most people do not take punctuality very seriously. They assume that a little adjustment here...

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If we negotiate hard, a lot comes our way. Here is an example from the personal experience of the author Recently, I had to renew the insurance for my car. Till now, I renewed the policy with the same insurance company that originally issued the policy. The tariff structure ensured that even if...

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As this action of a private bank shows, custo-mers may pay the price for a bank’s mistake, over-zealousness or stubbornness Cijo Paul, a mutual fund distributor at Ernakulam, urgently needed to issue a cheque. He is the kind of person who moves all surpluses in his savings account into fixed...

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India’s real estate market is in pain. The consensus is almost unanimous that property prices are set to fall. It’s pretty tough for the country’s property developers”, Citigroup said in a report this month. The speculators disagree. Backed by excellent fundamental performance,...

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I am a retail investor and a sub-broker with Kotak Securities; and I have a complaint regarding the passback given to the retail investors in IPOs by way of cash or kind. Very often, many sub-brokers issue newspaper advertisements offering such passbacks to lure investors to invest in...

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Venture capitalists make risky bets so that technological breaktroughs become possible. Shreedhar Kanetkar describes a fascinating one Imagine this. You meet a couple of guys you haven’t seen in years. They tell you about this idea they have: an electric car that will go from zero to sixty in...

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What kind of risks are the largest funds taking? One way to <Br>find out is to check their exposure to stocks of different sizes. Here is an analysis by Shailendra Lotlikar The mid-cap index recently made a new high before the Nifty did. There is a lot of talk of investing in small-cap...

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Franklin Templeton has come out with a fund that will aggressively invest in high-growth companies. There  are already proven growth funds in India. Buy the new Franklin fund at your own peril, says, Debashis Basu Franklin India High Growth Companies Fund will invest in companies “that have...

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India’s need for fuel is growing at a rapid pace and we import 72.5% of our petroleum needs. Any company that can locally source petroleum and natural gas will emerge as a big winner. Cairn India is one such company which is headquartered in UK but made a public issue in India last year to...

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Sometime at the end of August 2006, I used my Bobcard for the first time to make a $19 payment for my yahoo plus account. I had not used the card for almost a year since it was issued to me; a debit card served my needs except for on-line payments. During that period, I had zero...

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When it comes to modern day banking, it would be foolish to say 'yes' to their many offers without studying the fine print for hidden costsand charges. Check this out. M Mehta shopped at Big Bazaar as usual and paid by credit card. But instead of being charged in full, his credit card...

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In the last two years, cardholders have been plagued by  onerous new terms, shoddy grievance redressal and continued strong-arm recovery tactics, finds Sucheta Dalal Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) Deputy Governor, V Leeladhar, made a telling comment at a public meeting recently. He said 80% of...

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