DSIJ Mindshare

If you are in need of money and want to have a loan at a rate cheaper than personal loan, you can consider pledging your life insurance policy as collateral for raising the loan. You may apply for the loan either through the insurance policy or directly with the bank.

The performance of a mutual fund scheme cannot be done in isolation and it has to have some reference point or yardstick for comparison. The index to which the scheme is benchmarked provides such a reference point for comparison of the performance. If the scheme gives higher returns than the benchmark’s returns, it is said to have outperformed the benchmark during a given period of time; however, if it gives lower returns than that of the benchmark, the scheme is said to have underperformed the benchmark.

In India, an average investor barely knows about money market mutual funds (MMMFs), and even if he is aware, he seldom ventures to invest in these funds. There is a tendency among Indian investors to opt for known investment avenues such as bank fixed deposits, bonds, debentures, PPF, etc. The lack of awareness amongst investors about MMMFs deprives them of a good investment opportunity.

If you are planning to invest in securities such as fixed maturity plans (FMPs), closed-ended mutual funds, tax-free bonds or non-convertible debentures, you need to know that these securities are illiquid as there are not many buyers and sellers of these securities in the market.

The trade war tensions have escalated and the Asian markets have been rattled and have reached 6-month low post the deepening of trade war between the US and China.