AskLearnShare

Ask-Learn-Share Discussion August 21, 2022 Sid Roy This month’s Ask-Learn-Share meeting was a change in some ways. We have been focused on talking about the foundations of a sound investment strategy for a while. We have been stressing about the importance of starting with goals in mind and a well-diversified portfolio to reach those goals. In this episode, we will talk about getting a sense of how well the portfolio is doing. First, let us talk about portfolio benchmarking. What is it? An example from our school life might be a good way to get an intuitive understanding to start…

Ask-Learn-Share Discussion July 10, 2022 Sid Roy This is a follow-up to last month’s article on investing discipline in market volatility.  This was a very relevant topic considering the current market and what is happening to bonds and stocks. We covered a lot of ground in last month’s session. We talked about the two things that trip up even a model investor – risk capacity and risk tolerance. If you have not read that article, it is here. In today’s article, we go a bit deeper into the root of the problem. Many of us have started with a thoughtful…

Ask-Learn-Share Discussion June 10, 2022 Sid Roy We had a fantastic session talking about Investment Discipline in Market Volatility. The session could not have been more appropriate given everything that is going on in the world, the economy, and the investment market. We started noting this irony. We are doing a session focused on managing and responding in a disciplined way to market volatility. Yet, if we really followed sound investment principles, we would be taking a long-term outlook and instead we should be ignoring everything going on in the market. So, if you are not in the camp of…

Ask-Learn-Share Discussion May 11, 2022 Sid Roy We had another very informative session on a topic that interests me a lot – life insurance investments. This is partly because I was exposed to life insurance pretty early on in my life, but the topic of life insurance investments was new. I am guessing the same is true for most of you. We started the discussion with something almost all of us understand – simple term life insurance. It is meant to provide a financial cushion to family members if an earning member expires unexpectedly and thus the family loses its…

Ask-Learn-Share Discussion March 9, 2022 Sid Roy Last month we talked about a very interesting topic - annuities. That session was super informative, but annuities are a deep topic, and we had a lot of ground to cover. So, we followed up with another session this month on annuities covering various aspects. The first question we talked about is – who should consider annuities. As we learned last month, annuities are akin to your own personal pension. At the high level, annuities provide a guaranteed sum of money for the rest of your life like a public pension would. Therefore,…

Ask-Learn-Share Discussion February 6, 2022 Sid Roy This month we talked about a topic that mystified me personally for a while - annuities. This session was super informative and cleared up many beginner questions. This article summarizes the discussion we had. Annuities are a broad and deep topic so we will cover it in multiple articles. So, what are annuities? The simplest way to understand annuities is to think of a concept most of us are familiar with – the house mortgage. In taking out a loan to finance the purchase of a home, we agree to pay the bank…

Ask-Learn-Share Discussion December 2, 2021 Sid Roy Today we will discuss Goal Based Investing. We will tackle this in two parts. The first part is – what is goal-based investing? And in the second part, we will take a look at the differences between two specific goals as examples and compare differences in our approach towards these goals. Now let us get started. We are all familiar with setting goals at work. Then we have different initiatives and projects to progress towards that goal. Similarly, we all have goals in our personal lives. Typical examples of such goals might be…

Ask-Learn-Share Discussion January 6, 2022 Sid Roy All of us know there are risks in managing investment but that is where most people stop. This risk is somewhat confusing to get a grasp on. The lack of understanding can lead to bad investment decisions. It can also stop people from investing at all due to fear. As part of the Ask-Listen-Share series, we decided to focus on understanding and measuring portfolio risk in January. The first question is – what is risk? The most common understanding of risk is the chance of losing principal money in any investment. This is…