People forget how quickly the world can change. In February 1965, Charles de Gaulle stood before the world’s press at the Élysée Palace and said the one thing no Western leader was supposed to say out loud: the world should return to gold. Not the dollar. Not promises. Gold, because it “has no nationality” and…
Somewhere, a 64-year-old is doing math. Corpus built. Withdraw 4% a year. Bump it for inflation. Relax. It feels like science. It is actually folklore, and it was written in a country that is not yours. Where the number came from In 1994, an American financial planner named William Bengen tested a simple idea against…
“The greatest enemy of a good investment plan is often the investor himself.” That observation has become a staple of financial advisory circles, and much of the evidence behind it comes from one of the world’s most respected investor behaviour studies. For over three decades, DALBAR Inc., a Boston-based financial services market research firm, has…
Here is a question worth sitting with. When you picked your last mutual fund, did you actually understand what you were buying, or did you simply trust the name on the label? A new study by Eminence Strategy Consulting suggests most Indian investors are doing the latter. And the implications go well beyond individual portfolios….
India’s Gold Monetisation Scheme (GMS) is a government programme that lets households, temples and institutions deposit physical gold with banks, get it tested and melted into standard bullion, and receive a deposit that pays interest in rupees and returns in gold or cash at maturity. In plain terms, it tries to turn “idle” home gold…
Global silver has been in a structural deficit for six consecutive years. In 2025 global mine production reached 846.6 million ounces. Even after considerable recycling prompted by high prices and other secondary supply sources, total available metal fell short of demand, which the Silver Institute estimated at 1,130.6 million ounces. The result was a reported…
The Securities and Exchange Board of India’s latest proposal to extend Direct Market Access (DMA) to retail investors may appear progressive on paper, but it risks becoming one of the most disruptive experiments in India’s capital markets. For decades, DMA has remained the preserve of institutional investors for good reason. It allows orders to be…
Markets love a simple story. When the US dollar strengthens, headlines quickly split into two camps. One hails it as proof of American economic muscle: “strong dollar, strong America.” The next crisis reframes the same move as a desperate flight to safety, with the greenback the last safe haven in a toxic world. Both sound…
Why your risk appetite evolves as your wealth grows By BG Srinivas For decades, financial advisers have asked investors a seemingly straightforward question: How much loss can you tolerate? Ten per cent? Twenty per cent? Thirty per cent? The answer, however, may be fundamentally flawed. A 30 per cent loss on a ₹5 lakh portfolio…
There is a psychology experiment from 1966 that every investor should know about. A researcher named Elliot Aronson recruited college students and played them audio recordings of a candidate auditioning for a quiz bowl team. The candidates were actors. Some answered 92% of difficult questions correctly and sounded impressively credentialed. Others answered only 30% and…
