Other than our regular meetings and interactions, at the end of every financial year, we make it a point to send you portfolio reports along with our review.

Yesterday was the last working day of the market for the financial year 2018-19.

We would start sending your reports from next week and we hope to finish the task for every single client by end of April.

2017 was a great year and you all saw phenomenal returns. 2018 turned out to be a horrible year. But for the sharp recovery in the month of March, this financial year had a very bad time.

For long term investors, the portfolio returns look good. For those of you who started in the recent years, it is average to below average performance.

It’s election time and this is in the top of the mind for every investor. In the long run, markets are not influenced by politics. In the short run, sentiment and liquidity rules the roost. In the immediate future, election results would have impact on the markets. In the long run, what matters is return on equity and growth in earnings.

In the last 40 years of Sensex journey, it has seen all kind of governments; NDA, UPA and third front. The long term results you see are after going through multiple governments. I’ve no permanent affiliation to any one party or leader. Each election, be it parliament or assembly or local body; I’ve voted based on what I felt appropriate at that point of time.

Any government would have pluses and minuses. All I see is which one is more. This time I would prefer NDA government. I believe it is good for both the country and corporate India. None of us can be sure of who would form the next government till the last vote is counted. If NDA loses, it may impact market negatively for short term. In the long run, markets are politically agnostic.

Don’t worry about electoral outcomes. Your only focus should be on developing right behaviour and temperament. In your investing journey, you’re going to see multiple governments and prime ministers. They are not going to determine your investment results. The only deciding factor is going to be your behaviour.

Those of you who have invested during the recent years may be concerned by the lacklustre results. This too shall pass. Long term results would always be good. For time being, trust my words. In the long run, portfolio return itself would automatically convince you.

It’s all finally boils down to staying the course through ups and downs. The long term results are always rewarding.

All the very best for sticking to the course.

There have been lot of good developments over the last few years for the investors of mutual funds. The costs have been coming down, funds have been meaningfully classified and appropriate benchmarking has been done.

The costs would further come down from April of this year. Henceforth we see costs going only one way, down. Due to increased allocation to financial instruments by households, the size of the funds has been going only one way, up.

Globally, majority of the funds struggle to beat the benchmark. I would give you an example. If Nifty returns 12% in a year, your large cap fund should provide you more than 12% to justify the cost. The excess return over benchmark is called alpha. If the fund provides you lesser than benchmark, the cost you’ve incurred is simply waste of money.

To the credit of Indian fund industry, over last two decades, funds have created significant alpha over the benchmarks to justify the cost incurred. This is likely to change. World over, index funds have been gaining strength as fund managers find it extremely difficult to beat the index. In my view, this may be the case in future for India as well. Though Indian fund managers are confident of beating the index in future, I doubt whether that would be the case.

Based on the industry’s past track record, I want to wait for next three years to see how things take shape. We need to then decide whether we would move fully to index funds or combination of index funds as core portfolio and some active funds as satellite portfolio. We also need to choose whether the investments would be through funds or ETFs.

The advantage of index funds is the costs would be very low. At the same time, investors have to settle down for index returns and not something over and above. As much as the costs would come down, the returns also would go down.

I want to touch upon here real and nominal returns. Equities in India have been providing around 8% over and above inflation. When inflation was 8%, the returns were as high as 18%. Here the nominal rate of returns is 18% and the real rate of returns is 10% (over and above inflation). You can see that the inflation has been coming down over years. If inflation settles around 5% in the long run, then equities would provide nominal returns of only 12% or 13%.

Though the real returns remain the same, the nominal returns would come down. To give you an example, during times of high inflation, you may get 12% as salary increment. When the inflation comes down, the increment may be only say 6%. Though ‘really’ you’re not getting less, ‘nominally’ you’re getting less.

If indexing, alpha, real or nominal returns sounds very confusing, I would clarify all these in our personal meetings. In your own interest, it would be better to start learning.

As you’re aware, we’ve never recommended you any NFOs (New fund offers), sectoral or thematic funds, closed ended funds, PMS (Portfolio management services) and AIF (Alternative investment funds). We’ve consciously avoided all exotic and expensive stuff. Recommending these would have made you poorer and us richer.

Our biggest contribution is to avoid all nonsense and choose few sensible stuff. Also we’ve been continuously focusing on your behaviour to ensure you stay the course and earn the returns the funds are able to offer in the long run.

For now, you need to do nothing. But in next three years, we may have to relook the way you invest.

As I’ve said earlier, your costs are going down. This means the income of fund houses and advisors have also been going down. Ultimately what is good for you only should prevail.

Once indexing becomes the main stream, the cost would be bare-bones and so is our income. We also expect the regulator to nudge advisors to fee based model rather than commission based one. The intermediaries like us would then have to become RIAs (Registered investment advisor), who would only charge fee. Also there may be migration towards flat fee rather than asset based fee.

I’m writing this to keep you informed of likely changes in next three years. We need to see how things evolve before firmly recommending you a course. Stay with us. We’ve guided you so far with utmost integrity which would continue in future as well.