Month: August 2011
Below are all the posts archived for the month.
The two types of share buybacks
in Investments
In my post about introduction to share buy backs I touched upon the two types of share buybacks that can take place in the Indian share market, and a recent comment by Raja52 about the buyback offer of Allied Digital and their share price presents a a good practical example of one type of share
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How is tax on NCDs calculated?
in Tax
Reader Kanti Kiran emailed me with a couple of corrections related to taxation of NCDs post that I wrote yesterday, and I’m going to talk about them in this post. I said that the cumulative NCD option is not tax free, and that the money you get during the redemption will attract capital gains. Kanti
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Introduction to NCDs – Part II
in Fixed Deposits
I wrote Introduction to NCDs – Part 1 some time ago, and in that post I covered basic aspects about them. Then I wrote about how you could buy NCDs or bonds, and in this post I am going to look at some other questions that have cropped up about them since that time. In
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Bionic Hand, Vanishing Trees and Polished Chauffeurs
in Links
First up, here is a video about a very meaningful technology that’s amazing, as well as heart warming. The bionic hand works using electronic signals from the ending of the hand, and you can see from the video that the technology works quite well. Like any breakthrough, it’s expensive, but it’s only a matter of
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My thoughts on equities, fixed deposits and gold
in Opinion
This week has seen a lot of unusual activity along different asset classes and has continued to add to the environment of uncertainty that was prevailing earlier (and I’m only talking about economic environment here). Wednesday saw the NCD of India Infoline list at a big discount of 8%, which hasn’t happened before, and gold
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Per Capita Consumption of Electricity: Indian States
in Economy
I was looking at the per capita consumption of electricity by Indian states and I noticed two interesting things in there. Well three actually, but the third one is something that you would come to expect anyway. The third thing that you would come to expect is how low this number is – for the
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SBI Gold Fund Review
in Mutual Funds
SBI Gold Fund is a fund of funds that will have gold as its underlying asset, and will primarily invest in its own gold ETF – SBI GETS. It was just a matter of time that SBI came out with a fund of fund that invests in gold since gold has been on fire lately
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How to look for good stocks?
in Opinion
A question that crops up from time to time is how can a retail investor find good stocks. In my opinion – most retail investors are better off buying mutual funds than individual shares because the chances of your beating a professional fund manager are low. That said, there are a large number of people
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Book Review: In the Plex by Steven Levy
in Books
I have recently finished reading In The Plex, a book written by Steven Levy which traces the history of Google right from its early days to today. It was an incredible read, especially the first half or so that talks about the early days of Google when it was still a small and relatively unknown
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Print Solar Cells, Stanford Prison Experiments and Accidental Insurance
in Links
First off, let’s start with the most amazing thing I learned this week – MIT researchers have found a way to print solar cells on paper! Now, isn’t that something – apparently it could already be done, but the new method is much better than the old one. They need special room, and equipment of
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