January 2011

Mr. Gerard Colaco: Some time back you had sent me a consultation paper on minimum common standards for financial advisers and financial education. A committee on investor awareness and protection had been constituted by the Government of India to go into this subject. I just finished reading the paper, because I had quite a huge reading backlog.

The report is unlike the most other reports, because it is well written. But the contents of the report are nothing new and efforts in this area have been made even in the advanced countries, without much success.

Question: The Husband & Wife both would like to invest monthly Rs. 10,000/- each in Equity Mutual Fund Schemes through Systematic Investment Plan (SIP) investment strategy. I have advised both of them to Rs. 2,000/- per month into the following five mutual fund schemes as recommended by you. The following are the five recommended mutual fund schemes for your kind notice;

Question: Housing is an important step in Personal Financial Planning, and for those who can block the money for at least 10 years, real estate is a good investment. So taking into consideration of needs and returns of investors, can we expect some excellent insights about real estate from you?

Question: Housing is an important step in Personal Financial Planning, and for those who can block the money for at least 10 years, real estate is a good investment. So taking into consideration of needs and returns of investors, can we expect some excellent insights about real estate investment from you?

When it comes to the factor of risks of ownership in real estate, we can shift it to an insurance company by purchasing ‘Title Insurance’. So kindly advice me on the importance and utility of ‘title insurance’?

Question: Me and my wife are doing well in US and in the meantime we are trying to set some financial goals for ourselves and have been doing some research to achieve them.

In our present situation, we are interested in mutual fund investments in the US and were wondering if you could suggest any mutual funds with no or low loads and minimal investments of $ 150 per month. We just want to give it a start no matter how small the amounts. Any suggestions will be appreciated.