Slack is where the daily action happens. We take pride in our diverse and always helpful member community which includes value investors, fund managers, and professional traders. Here are the top 10 interesting things discussed there in the last few days. Find all older ones here.
#general: Playing Devil’s Advocate on Index Funds
There are plenty of people out there worried about index funds but most of their claims are likely unfounded or misunderstandings about the way things work in the markets. The ones I don’t buy are that indexing gives you “mediocre” or “average” results (it doesn’t – it almost guarantees you’ll be top quartile after fees) or that there are fewer investors allocating capital correctly (most of the money coming out of active funds was being closet indexed anyways) or index funds are a fad (I believe the shift to low-cost investments is secular, not cyclical). A Wealth of Common Sense
#general: Six financial rules followed by your parents have changed over the years: Find out which
The financial rules our parents and grandparents swore by hardly hold true for us today. Saurin Parikh delves into the conventional financial wisdom the previous generation lived by to understand why the new-age wisdom is more relevant today. Economic Times
CASHING IN STOCK MARKET TURNOVER: Rush hour on #DalalStreet to earn the govt record STT https://t.co/rLADTnjr7t pic.twitter.com/oZTyqUhuqU
— ETMarkets (@ETMarkets) March 27, 2017
#macronomics: Land leasing, renting to attract GST from Jul 1
From July 1, leasing of land, renting of buildings as well as EMIs paid for purchase of under-construction houses will start attracting the Goods and Services Tax. Sale of land and buildings will be however out of the purview of GST, the new indirect tax regime. Such transactions will continue to attract the stamp duty, according to the legislation’s Finance Minister Arun Jaitley introduced in the Lok Sabha yesterday for approval. Rediff
#general: Evaluating True Diversifiers
All true diversifiers are alternatives, but not all alternatives are true diversifiers. So, we did some research to help investors identify what really belongs in their alternatives allocation. As a result, we’re offering a clear definition of true diversifiers as investment strategies that historically deliver both. Long Board Funds
#general: Connecting the Dots – 3/27/17
Most of the observations we’ve noted over the past year, with respect to similarities with market conditions in 1987, have been from a comparative perspective with long-term Treasuries. In hindsight, you could see this directly derivative of our thoughts on the collapse in oil prices that began in the back half of 2014, that from a relative performance point of view had few market parallels. Market Anthropology
#general: Trend following does not work on stocks.
There’s a good reason why most professionals who apply models similar to trend following to stocks call them momentum models. It’s not just a clever rebranding, it’s really a very different game. To blindly cling to trend following as a religion, disregarding any real world evidence and attacking anyone presenting ideas that differ to the trend following mantra is not only unprofessional, it’s outright dangerous. Following The Trend
#stocks: Reliance Jio receives poor response, says report; only 13 percent customers sign up for Prime membership.
Reliance Jio’s Happy New Year offer is going to end on March 31, after which the subscribers will have to start paying in order to continue using the network service. Following the announcement of Jio as the latest entrant in the telecom sector, more than a 100 million subscribers were added to the network. But according to a new report, as the offers are nearing an end, the response to the network has been lukewarm at best. Financial Express
#stocks: No amnesty for BS-III vehicles after April 1, says Bajaj Auto
Bajaj Auto announced that it is ready to comply with the Environment Pollution Control Authority’s (EPCA) direction of neither selling nor registering any pre-BS-IV vehicle from April 1, 2017. The company says all its two- and three-wheelers manufactured from January 2017 meet BS-IV emission norms. The Pune-based manufacturer is probably the first Indian two-wheeler manufacturer to fully meet BS-IV norms well before the April 1, 2017 deadline. Autocar India
Walmart to open 50 new stores, half of those in UP, Uttarakhandhttps://t.co/bhIIlO4ogs pic.twitter.com/3yvuXOm5Yy
— Times of India (@timesofindia) March 26, 2017
#general: Indian companies line up Rs20,000 crore IPOs
The initial public offer (IPO) lane is getting busy as companies have lined up initial public offerings worth Rs20,000 crore in the coming months to fund their business expansion and meet working capital requirements. Hudco, NSE, Central Depository Services Ltd, Nakshatra World and Cochin Shipyard are among the names that plan to launch share sale offers in coming months. Livemint
#general: Op-Ed: The Fed’s stealthy QE — $267 billion of fresh liquidity injected since mid-January
While solicitously “guiding” the markets to its “earth-shaking” 0.25 percent interest rate increase last Wednesday, the Fed has been expanding its balance sheet – big time — by buying a huge amount of assets in exchange for cash to reassure equity and bond traders. CNBC
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