Most financial intermediaries are reluctant to "market" #indexfunds & #ETFs....and all too eager & enthusiastic to "market" #activefunds, PMS & AIFs....
....#investors should "smell the coffee" & #invest wisely !
When you realise Rahul Gandhi's Adani campaign is directly benefiting China's global port takeover strategy, the entire political narrative looks completely different.
This is not election politics. This is an international trade war being fought inside India's parliament.
For a decade China has been executing a single strategic playbook. Control the world's ports and you control world trade. Belt and Road was never about roads. It was about acquiring chokepoints. Maritime routes. Strategic harbours. One by one across Asia, Africa and Europe. And for a while nobody was seriously contesting it.
Then Adani started showing up at the same auctions.
Sri Lanka's port. Tanzania. Israel's Haifa, one of the most strategically located ports in the Middle East, taken directly from under Chinese companies. Adani was even moving toward Greek ports which would have given India a direct commercial foothold into European maritime infrastructure. Every single move landed in geography where China had already planted its flag or was actively trying to. This was not accidental diversification. This was direct systematic competition with China's port acquisition strategy at the exact locations that mattered most globally.
Now here is where the story gets uncomfortable.
The moment Adani starts winning globally against Chinese interests a coordinated negative narrative begins inside India. Investigations. Allegations. Political pressure. International short seller reports timed with remarkable precision. The coverage relentless. The framing consistent across multiple countries simultaneously.
The Kenya airport project is the clearest example.
Adani won the JKIA contract worth 1.9 billion dollars. The propaganda that followed was so intense that Kenya's president cancelled the contract under public pressure. The company that got the project after Adani was removed? Chinese.
A narrative campaign inside a democratic country successfully removed an Indian competitor from a strategic infrastructure project and handed it directly to China. No military operation required. No diplomatic confrontation. Just information warfare executed through political proxies and international media.
The pattern is too consistent to be coincidental. Kenya reversal. Sri Lanka disruption. Allegations timed precisely with Adani's biggest global moves. Every controversy conveniently benefits the same competitor. Every setback creates an opening that one country consistently walks into.
The question nobody in India's political conversation is asking is the obvious one.
Who benefits every time Adani loses a global contract?
India's loudest domestic political narrative is running parallel to China's most important global strategic objective. Whether that parallelism is coordinated or simply convenient is the question that deserves far more scrutiny than it is currently receiving.
Every single one of the points are a real problem.
But your understanding is broken, let me explain. :)
Norway has 55 lakh people. Total. That’s smaller than the population of Pune. Their entire country has fewer citizens than India’s 25 smallest cities individually. Norway also has 1.2 trillion dollars in sovereign wealth from oil reserves, accumulated over 50 years.
They have $250,000 per citizen sitting in the fund. India has roughly $3,400 per citizen in forex reserves.
Norway is what you get when a small population sits on top of one of the largest per-capita oil discoveries in human history.
The right comparison is other low-income, high-population, post-colonial democracies. Brazil. Indonesia. Nigeria. Bangladesh. Pakistan. Egypt. Mexico. South Africa. Vietnam. Philippines.
Compare on these and India isn’t doing badly. It’s doing better than most.
UPI is the world’s largest real-time payments system.
Aadhaar is the world’s largest biometric identity system.
We absorbed the global pandemic, the Ukraine war, the West Asia conflict, Trump’s tariffs, the Iran war, and a rupee fall without going into recession.
Most of those countries above did. Pakistan went to the IMF 24 times. Sri Lanka collapsed. Bangladesh is unstable. Egypt needed emergency Gulf bailouts. Argentina has 60% inflation. We stayed standing.
India is the only country in human history to add a trillion dollars of GDP every 18 months. We added our first trillion in 2007. Our second in 2017. Our third in 2024. Our fourth coming in 2026.
The problems you mentioned exist in every large, low-income, high-density country on earth.
Mexico City’s pollution is worse than Delhi’s.
Manila’s traffic is worse than Mumbai’s.
Lagos has worse road quality than Delhi.
Jakarta has worse air than Delhi.
Cairo has worse adulteration.
Karachi has more corruption.
Hanoi has higher pollution.
None of these countries are run by Modi. They’re all dealing with the same impossible math.
Industrialising a country of 145 crore people during a global energy transition, with limited natural resources, while keeping democracy intact, is the single hardest governance challenge in human history.
> China did it without democracy.
> South Korea did it with a population one-tenth our size.
> Japan did it with no major religious or linguistic diversity.
> Singapore did it with 50 lakh people total.
Nobody has done it at India’s scale, with our diversity, in democratic conditions.
So when someone asks “why hasn’t Modi built one city like Norway,” the answer is because building one Norway requires not having 144.5 crore other Indians to look after.
"And those who built their entire politics on abusing Sanatan will discover that India forgives many things, but it does not forget civilisational insult."
My new X article on why West Bengal election results will force every political party against the BJP to change their skin. 👇
There comes a point when opposing every major national reform stops looking like dissent and starts looking like sabotage. Congress party crossed that point long ago.
Jan Dhan. Digital India. Triple Talaq. Article 370. CAA. UCC. One Nation, One Election. Waqf reform. Action against Naxal-Maoist violence. Checklist rant? Sometimes the checklist is the indictment. The pattern is too long, too consistent and too revealing to ignore.
That is the real problem with Rahul Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi and the family business called Congress. They no longer evaluate reform by asking whether it helps India. They evaluate it from two lenses - the first is the George Soros and anti-India lens. The second: by asking one thing only: does it politically help BJP and strengthen Prime Minister Narendra Modi even if it is good for our country? If their short-sighted and opaque lens says yes, oppose it first, distort it later, and moralise about it forever.
Look at the record. Congress fought Triple Talaq reform even as Muslim women paid the price for that cowardice. It opposed the abrogation of Article 370 and then spent years wobbling, retreating and contradicting itself. It opposed CAA. It vowed to fight One Nation, One Election “tooth and nail.” This is not principled resistance. This is compulsive obstruction.
At some point, “anti-BJP” becomes so total that it turns anti-India in effect. Because when you repeatedly stand against institutional reform and national-security corrections, you are not merely attacking a government. You are standing in the way of the country moving forward.
And that is why Congress keeps collapsing morally even before it collapses electorally. It does not sound like a national alternative anymore. It sounds like a bitter inheritance operation run by a dynasty that cannot bear the idea of India changing without its permission.
The people of India have understood the pattern. That is why the Gandhi family’s outrage no longer inspires; it irritates.
@iamrakeshbansal Mis-selling at banks is a rampant practice, whether insurance, mutual funds, bonds or any financial product. Meet targets at any cost is the mantra!
@ETNOWlive@MarcellusInvest@AyeshaFaridi1 Ayesha madam, why do you take views from a fund manager who fails to beat the benchmark for the last 5 years?
It is just like taking advice from a doctor who failed to clear MBBS even after 5 consecutive attempts
What to say about Morgan Stanley and the kind of guesses they make every few months.....
The less said the better.
There is no accountability, throw a random number, thinking investors will lap it up....
December 2020: A client chose not to renew the engagement because I had recommended HDFC & Franklin Multicap (today’s Flexicap) along with Parag Parikh.
His exact words in a message to me were:
“the multicap (HDFC & Franklin) cost me dearly” (compared to other better-performing funds.)
This was my response to him:
"I respect your decision. Just want to clarify my stand.
We can not anticipate future performance of any actively managed fund in advance. No actively managed fund outperforms its peers and benchmark at all times. So you choose good fund managers and give them at least 5 years of time.
The only sensible reason to invest in actively managed mutual funds is to generate higher return than index funds. If actively managed part of your portfolio has beaten the index, you should consider that you have got lucky outcome.
All components of portfolio don't perform at all times. Here is performance of funds in your portfolio in last one year. Only one fund underperformed. But actively managed part of the portfolio has still beaten index return.
Even if we had reviewed, I would have asked you continue investment in HDFC Equity. Changing funds immediately after their underperformance doesn't work."
I will keep saying this till I get hoarse: Fund returns are not the same as investor returns. There is a large behaviour gap between what a fund delivers and what an investor actually earns.
Fund hopping doesn’t work. Adviser hopping doesn’t either.
HOW DO YOU CAST yr lot with biz?
Simply by buying a portfolio tht owns shares of every biz in d US*& then holding it forevr
This simple concept guarantees u will win d invstmnt game played by most other invstrs who—as a grp—r guaranteed to lose-J Bogle
*same for India
Since its launch on 28 Feb 2025, the Angel One Nifty Total Market Index Fund has closely tracked the Nifty Total Market TRI.
To invest click - https://t.co/Ley9spZEUH
Mutual fund investments are subject to market risks, read all scheme related documents carefully.
@AngelOne
I know many who believe in index investing.
Some of my clients have index only equity portfolios.
My own equity investments are all in market cap weighted index funds.
"I suggest Index Funds for equity investments." This line has been on my website since 2020.
And you don’t need to restrict India to 3% of your equity portfolio just because you believe in indexing.
Indexing is a method of investing, not a commitment to global market-cap weights.
You can index any country, region, or market segment based on your chosen allocation framework.
For decades, Bollywood was dominated by leftists who used cinema for subversive means. Brahmins were shown as devious manipulators; Rajputs were shown as oppressive and brutal landlords or dacoits; Pandits were portrayed as slime balls; Hindu saints and shrines as dens of inequity and perversion; Hnduism and Hindu values and beliefs were openly abused, derided, debunked; Muslim thugs (remember Sher Khan of Zanjeer) was a noble criminal and great friend; Movies pushed sarkari propaganda and were anti-industry anti business full of socialistic drivel; rich were always evil and to be poor was honourable; All that was kosher. In fact bollywood biggies (many of them from Punjabi refugee families who were thrown out and escaped with nothing but the clothes they had) became a spokespersons and propagandists for Pakistan despite the terrorism, enmity, hostility and hatred that came to India from that country.
One movie Dhurandhar on Pakistani terrorists, and the entire Pakistani sleeper cell crowd in Indian media, civil society has gone apoplectic imagining that heavens will fall on them.
Unfortunately heavens wont fall on these people and they will continue to stay in India and defend terrorists and Pakistani terrorism, in part because they share the same religion. Incidentally, their own cousins who migrated to Pakistan are treated like shit by the Punjabi Muslim. But apno se gaali bhi dua hoti hai for these characters.
Nifty Total Market Index is now the actual Total market coverage. Years ago when Benchmark AMC had launched Nifty500 it used to be the market, but Indian economy has evolved since then, so NiftyTotalMarket index is now the mother of all indices!
Thread: The Evolution of Simplicity 🧵
Why Nifty 500 Index fund, instead of mix of sliced and diced, Nifty 50, Next 50, Mid Cap 150, Small Cap 250, etc.?
@BaburaojiApte Because 750 is the investible universe currently, it's not a magical number, the methodology is available on the website of NSE, naming Total Market as misleading is your individual opinion!
@BaburaojiApte Incorrect, it is Total Market because 750 is the investible universe, although the number of listed stocks maybe higher. Obviously, some thought process went on behind NSE naming it Total Market!