Prashant Krishnan Podcasts

Thomas Carlyle, the Scottish writer and philosopher, called economics the dismal science. I don’t know if you’ll agree but having read economics textbooks, I certainly think they’re dismal. They’re filled with unnecessary complexity, pointless jargon and theories that have been dead and buried for decades. While economics as a discipline has progre…

In the last 15 years, Indian asset management has grown leaps and bounds. One of the amazing success stories of this period has been Mirae Asset management, which is best known for its well managed equity funds. In this episode, I caught up with Swarup Mohanty, the CEO of Mirae Asset Investment Managers (India). Swarup has been at Mirae since day 1…

We are at an important crossroads in history. The pandemic might seem like it’s behind us but we have a raging war in Europe, unprecedented sanctions, currency crises, inflationary pressures, and volatile markets. There are early signs of a shift away from the dollar and uncertainty about the US led global order. So what does all this mean for Indi…

Up until the 1990s, the Capital asset pricing model (CAPM) was the dominant model used to explain market returns. But in 1992 Nobel Laureate Eugene Fama and his partner, Ken French said that market returns can be explained by three factors namely: 1. Value: the tendency of cheap stocks to outperform costly stocks 2. Size: the tendency of small cap …

What does it take to survive multiple market cycles and create wealth? This week, we have a really, really special guest. I caught up with Sankaran Naren, one of India's most admired and well-known fund managers, and the chief investment officer (CIO) of ICICI Prudential AMC. In this conversation, we spoke about his 3-decade career in the Indian ma…

One topic we keep talking about on the podcast is debt funds. As we've alluded to numerous times in the show, most investors focus too much on the equity part of their portfolio and ignore the debt part. They often take debt for granted and invest based on recommendations or based on whatever partial understanding they have. This often ends up back…

Retirement is the ultimate goal for everyone. We work, save, and invest so that we can kick back and retire comfortably, but a vast majority of Indians aren't ready for their retirement. This is due to structural economic issues, lack of awareness about the need for retirement planning, the lack of quality advice, among other reasons. PGIM India Mu…

The way the markets have run up post the March 2020 crash have equally surprised and perplexed investors. Given the pace of the recent bull run, that's understandable. A lot of smart people are wondering what's happening in the markets. But that's how the markets work—they don't have to make sense and they rarely do. So, we caught up with Kalpen Pa…

The CFA Society India recently published the second edition of The Investor’s Guide to Shareholder Meetings in India. As investors, even though we hold stocks of various companies, we rarely think about our rights. Investors also rarely realize that by virtue of the shares they hold, they are entitled to voting rights in a company. It's a chance fo…

In this episode, we have a really really special guest. We caught up with Prashant Jain, the chief investment officer (CIO) of HDFC Mutual Fund. Prashanth is a market veteran and the first India fund manager to manage a single mutual fund scheme for over 25 years. He manages some of the largest active mutual fund schemes in India. Over his nearly 2…

Gold is probably one of the most controversial and perplexing asset classes. Some well-known investors like Warren Buffett call it useless while other investors take the middle path and recommend small allocations. As for investors, they often struggle to think about it in a portfolio construct. So we caught up with Chirag Mehta, senior fund manage…

In part 1, Rishad gave a quick intro to personal finance if you are new to investing. The pandemic has put a lot of stress on people's finances. So in part 2, we decided to focus on how to manage your personal finances in these challenging times. In this part, Rishad talks about His experiences with investors during the pandemic How to prepare your…

Millions of new investors have started investing post-pandemic, and this is a good thing. But given that the returns in the past year have been spectacular, many new investors continue to make the same old mistakes and have wrong expectations. They tend to take the basics for granted. While pretty much anything investors do will work out in a bull …

We recently did a Twitter live session with Amit Grover, the Head - Learning & Development, DSP Mutual Fund on the right way to invest in Equity Linked Savings Schemes (ELSS) or tax-saving mutual funds. When you invest in an ELSS mutual fund, you can claim a tax deduction on investments up to Rs 1.5 lakhs and you can save up to Rs ₹46,800 in taxes.…

Though the momentum effect is widely known in developed markets like the US, it's still relatively unknown in India. Over the past few years, there's been growing interest in the momentum style of investing. UTI Mutual Fund recently launched India's first momentum index fund which tracks the Nifty 200 Momentum 30 Index. But investors often extrapol…

With interest rates at all-time lows, these are tricky times for fixed income (debt) investors. The consensus view seems to be that we are done with the rate cut cycle and the RBI may gradually start increasing rates. Most debt fund categories have delivered handsome returns in the past 2-3 years given the series of rate cuts. But if the rates star…

All the issues in the debt mutual fund space in the past 3 years have highlighted just how important it is to get your debt allocation right. But unfortunately, a lot of investors spend a lot of time thinking about equity in when deciding their asset allocation but take the debt part of the allocation for granted. And this has come back to haunt a …

Motilal Oswal AMC is launching a new 5-year constant maturity G-sec ETF, the first one in India. It’s an interesting product for a lot of reasons. And also given that ETFs have been around for a while and investors have a lot of misconceptions. Today, we caught up with Prateek to talk him about how ETFs works and the new Motilal Oswal 5 Year G-Sec …

One of the things that investors struggle with the most is with having the right expectations when investing and we've talked about this in the previous episodes as well. Mid-cap funds and small-cap funds tend to have higher returns than large-cap funds. But what most investors don't realize is that those higher returns come with a cost - that is h…

To say this year has been a roller-coaster ride for the markets would be an understatement. A lot of new investors saw their first serious market crash since 2008, although it didn't last as long, it was brutal nonetheless. But what was surprising was the dramatic recovery even as all the economic data was dismal. We wanted to make sense of the dis…

Index funds and ETFs are steading becoming popular among Indian investors as they realize the importance of costs and the fact that fund managers generating alpha is hard. In the past year or so, we've discussed index funds and the merits of passive investing in multiple conversations but we haven't spoken much about Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs). T…

In part 1, Vidya spoke about why mutual funds, having the right expectations, setting goals, importance of asset allocation, and how to pick an equity fund. We figured given all the issues, the topic of debt mutual funds deserves a separate episode unto itself. Debt is supposed to be the boring part of your portfolio that provides stability while e…

Since Feb 2020, we've seen historic and unprecedented volatility in the Indian markets. We saw the fastest fall in the markets and also one of the fastest recoveries in the history of the Indian markets. All this was within a space of a few months. Surprisingly, we are seeing a sharp uptick in the number of new investors enter the markets, but the …

In this episode, Prateek (Founder of LearnApp) caught up with Radhika Gupta, the CEO of Edelweiss Mutual Fund. Radhika started her career with McKinsey and later joined AQR - the pioneering quantitative asset manager. She then started her own hedge fund which was acquired by Edelweiss Financial Services in 2014. She also led the acquisitions of JP …

As we publish this episode the markets continue to remain volatile and the Nifty 50 and Nifty Midcap 100 are down about 25% while the Nifty Smallcap 100 index is down by 33% year to date. We understand that these can be nerve-wracking times for you. With that in mind, over the last couple of weeks, we've published conversations with some of the sma…

Whenever there is volatility, equity markets get all the attention. Bonds typically don't move around as much as equities and hence they seem boring to most people. Moreover, the Indian bond markets are extremely shallow and are dominated by institutions. But the bond markets send far more useful and actionable signals about companies and the econo…

One of the most prevalent yet ignored biases among investors is called the home country bias - the tendency of investors to invest all or most of their money in the country they live in. To give you some context, India is just 2% of the world marketcap - meaning a vast majority of the investment opportunities lie outside India. And old economy stoc…

Since mid-February, there has been a sharp sell-off in the markets as the Corona Virus pandemic spreads through the globe. As we record this, Nifty 50 is down 25% while Nifty Mid-cap 100 and Nifty small-cap 100 indices are down by over 30% and 40% respectively. This is the sharpest fall in the markets since the 2008 financial crisis. And you might …

The Bharat Bond ETF by Edelweiss Mutual Fund opens for subscription today. This exchange traded fund (ETF) holds AAA-rated bonds issued by public sector enterprises. The Bharat Bond ETF is unique in a lot of respects. In this wide-ranging conversation, Dhawal Dalal, Chief Investment Officer - Fixed Income of Edelweiss Mutual Fund talks to Prateek S…

Debt markets have suddenly become more action-packed than the equity markets. Ever since the IL&FS default, investors have slowly grown to realize that even debt carries its own risks. make no mistake, debt plays an important role in a portfolio. But it is imperative that you as an investor understand the various debt instruments and use them the r…

These are unnerving times for investors with the markets being volatile. Long term investors should ideally embrace volatility, but we are seeing investors stop their investments. Volatile markets tend to induce investors to most often than not, make all the wrong choices. When markets undergo a period of under-performance, investors tend to stop t…

Contra funds is a new and unique category that was carved out in the recent scheme reclassification by SEBI. By the very definition, these funds follow a contrarian investment approach and swim against the tide. These funds invest in stocks that are out of favor, special situations, and stocks that can turnaround. Taher Badshah is the Chief Investm…

In the 4th and final part of the video, Winston talks about accrual management i.e., how to generate returns by managing the yield to maturity (YTM) in your portfolio. When you buy a bond, you earn an assured interest (coupon), which will accrue in your portfolio. In this part, you will learn how you can maximize this. Winston covers concepts such …

In part 3 of the webinar, Winston talks about Duration. It is one of the most important factors when you are choosing a bond or a bond fund. Duration is a measure of a bond's sensitivity to changes in interest rates. In order to understand duration, you will also need to have a working knowledge of discounting future cash flows or time value of mon…

In this part 2 of Bond Basics series, Winston talks about making money in bonds. He covers the basic concepts of a bond such as: Coupon rate Bond price Yield Yield to maturity (YTM) MTM - mark to market pricing He also talks about: The Bond Rule: Relationship between Interest rates and Bond prices. Yield curve Credit spreads Winston also discusses …

The awareness about debt schemes in limited due to a variety of reasons. But having a fixed income or debt component in your portfolio is essential to building a diversified portfolio. In part 1 of the Series, Winston Noronha, Head of content and learning and development at IDFC mutual fund explains the basics of bonds, the various types of instrum…

Raamdeo Agrawal, co-founder of Motilal Oswal financial services is one of India's most prominent value investors. His annual wealth creation studies are a treasure trove of insights. In this conversations he talks about how he got started as an investor, his framework for value investing, his learnings from Warren buffet and more. He also talks abo…

Mahesh Patil is the Co-Chief Investment Officer of Aditya Birla Sun Life AMC and one of the biggest names in the fund management space. He leads a team of twenty, comprising fund managers and analysts, managing around INR 88,590 crores in equity assets. In this conversation with Karthik Rangappa, Mahesh talks about: 1. Overall macros of India and t…

Having idle cash in your trading account is a bit of a conundrum. In this episode, Anil Ghelani Senior Vice President - DSP Mutual Fund explains how liquid ETFs work, the underlying securities, and how you can use a Liquid ETF for cash management and to plan your trades.

Most of us today invest without clear goals in mind. But the thing about setting goals for your investing is that it helps you quantify them. It also allows you to easily set expectations and choose the right instruments to achieve those goals. In this conversation Aashish P Somaiyaa, CEO of Motilal Oswal AMC explains how one should go about settin…

If you want equity returns, you must also stomach the associated volatility. We as investors cannot control market movement, interest rates, crude prices, and other factors. What we can however control is our behavior and how we construct our portfolios. In this conversation, Rajeev Thakkar, Chief Investment Officer (CIO) of PPFAS Mutual Fund talks…

Multi-cap mutual funds are a unique category because they have a flexible mandate to invest across market capitalizations. Meaning a single fund can invest across large, mid, and small-cap stocks. Given that not all stocks perform the same across market cycles, these funds are the perfect choice to build your core portfolio. In this conversation, R…

India today accounts for just under 4% of the global stock market capitalization. This means that over 95% of the investable opportunities lie outside India. A vast majority of the investors today invest within the borders of a country, this is called as "Home country bias". But, there is a case to made for diversifying geographically. In this conv…

Mutual funds don't just mean equity funds. Debt mutual funds (fixed income) today account for over 50% of total mutual funds AUM but it is largely dominated by institutions. In order to build a diversified portfolio, having a debt component in your portfolio is very important. Debt is largely uncorrelated to equity and tends to zag when equity zigs…

Jack Schwager, the author of the critically acclaimed Market Wizards series and the Co-founder of Fundseeder, talks to Nithin about his evolution as a trader, and his trading style and his views on fundamental analysis, technical analysis, and risk management. Click here http://bit.ly/jackschwager for the transcript of the interview published on Mo…

In this episode, Raghav Iyengar, CEO of Indiabulls Asset Management talks about the do's and don'ts of investing in volatile markets.

Tax-saving mutual funds (ELSS) are one of the best avenues to invest for long term with tax benefits. In this episode we speak to Jinesh Gopani, Head of Equities at Axis MF and the fund manager of Axis Long Term Equity Fund about the basics of Equity Linked Saving Schemes (ELSS) and what makes them an attractive investment option.…