Independent Research on Mutual Funds, Stocks & IPOs for Indian Investors

The downside capture ratio is one of the most honest and least discussed metrics in mutual fund analysis. It does not measure how much a fund earns in good times. It measures how much of the market's pain the fund absorbs in bad times. A fund that falls less than the market when the market is falling is quietly doing something invaluable for its investors: protecting the wealth that bull markets built. A fund that falls more than the market when things go wrong is quietly des

This is not fraud. It is not even dishonest in a narrow legal sense. It is something subtler and in some ways more dangerous: it is the perfectly legal use of a mathematically correct but deeply incomplete picture. CAGR, or Compound Annual Growth Rate, is the return metric most investors rely on almost exclusively. It has real value, but it also has a structural weakness that the fund industry has quietly learned to exploit. Rolling returns exist precisely to correct that wea

The mutual fund industry in India has never been more accessible. With thousands of schemes across dozens of fund houses available on a dozen different apps, building a portfolio has never been easier. But ease of access has created a new problem that barely existed a generation ago: over diversification. Indian retail investors are increasingly holding portfolios of 15, 20, or even 30 mutual funds, convinced that each new fund adds protection, when in reality many of them ar

If you have ever watched your portfolio tumble and felt an overwhelming urge to sell everything and flee to the safety of cash, you already know what behavioural finance tries to explain. If you have ever poured money into a stock after reading about how it has already doubled in three months, hoping to catch the tail end of a rally, you have also lived the very phenomenon that drives markets to excess in both directions. The frustrating and fascinating truth is that the aver

A Gold ETF is an open-ended mutual fund scheme that is listed and traded on a stock exchange, just like shares of a company. Each unit of a Gold ETF represents a specific quantity of physical gold, typically one gram, though this can vary slightly across fund houses. The fund buys and stores actual gold bullion that meets certain purity standards (usually 99.5% purity or higher as mandated by SEBI), and the value of your ETF units moves in line with the prevailing domestic go

If you have been investing in mutual funds for a while, you have probably grown familiar with terms like Total Expense Ratio, Large Cap Fund, and ELSS. But from April 1, 2026, the rules governing all of these have changed, and changed significantly. SEBI, the Securities and Exchange Board of India, has rolled out a comprehensive new regulatory framework called the SEBI (Mutual Funds) Regulations, 2026, replacing a structure that had been in place since 1996. This is not a min

For generations, the fixed deposit has been the undisputed king of Indian household savings. Safe, predictable, and backed by a bank, it offered exactly what a risk-averse population wanted: a promise. You put your money in, you knew what you would get out, and you slept well at night. That comfort, however, comes at a cost that most investors never truly reckon with. Today, with over 50 mutual fund categories regulated by SEBI and asset management companies managing more tha

Mutual fund redemption is the process of selling your mutual fund units back to the Asset Management Company (AMC) at the prevailing Net Asset Value (NAV). Unlike stocks, you do not sell to another buyer in a marketplace. You sell directly to the fund house, which buys back your units and credits the proceeds to your registered bank account within a stipulated settlement period. There comes a point in every investor's journey when the question shifts from 'where do I put my m

The single most powerful idea in Indian personal finance over the past decade has not been a new asset class or a fancy derivative product. It is, rather, a plain instruction you give your bank every month: invest a fixed amount, no matter what the market is doing. That instruction is the Systematic Investment Plan, and the question that keeps first-time investors up at night is simple: how much do I need to start? The answer, as of February 2026, is often as little as Rs 1