Investment lessons

Article Summary

• Gold investments help diversify risks and provide growth even in times of adverse developments in equities and debt markets.

5 Investing Myths

Myths concerning investing tend to be costly. They can lead you to take too much risk, or too little. Worse still, may cause you to avoid investing altogether.Granted, investing is not an easy endeavour. But by busting certain myths, you can at least venture on the straight path.

5 Don'ts When Using Star Ratings

When hunting for a fund, star ratings are a great starting point. They provide a composite, visual measure of a fund’s historical risk-adjusted return compared to peers: in any particular category, funds clocking the top-10% risk-adjusted returns get a five-star rating, followed by the next 22.5%, 35%, 22.5% and 10%, respectively, from four to one stars.But they can also be misleading. Here are five don’ts to consider when checking out the 5-star rated funds.

Buying stocks is not easy. It requires a great amount of leg work. And the entire exercise is complicated by emotion. But it is possible to benefit from specific equities in your investment portfolio. Here are some cautionary moves before you sink your money into stocks.

As much as anything else, successful investing requires something perhaps even more rare: the ability to identify and overcome one's own psychological weaknesses.In this article, we focus on how the insights from the field of behavioural finance can benefit individual investors. Primarily, we're interested in how we can learn to spot and correct investing mistakes in order to yield greater profits.

One should not keep all its eggs in the same basket. Such a piece of advice rightfully focuses on the importance of different asset classes within the investment portfolio. While one may have invested in various asset classes in an optimal proportion, the ratio can subsequently change due to the relative outperformance/ underperformance of different asset classes. It becomes vital for the investors to periodically rebalance the investment portfolio to keep it aligned with the investor risk appetite.

Here is a step-by-step guide to portfolio rebalancing:

To reach a holistic assessment, performance should be viewed adroitly to unearth a fund’s realistic potential.

5 Steps to Decipher Past Performance

If you have ever invested in mutual funds, chances are that you would have narrowed down on one that put up some very good numbers in the recent past. Despite the bold disclaimers about past performance not necessarily being sustained in the future, investors have a hard time resisting the numbers. Past performance is undoubtedly very luring, but should you rely on it?

Globally, a growing number of ETFs straddle the line between active and passive, offering investors a dizzying array of increasingly complex choices.

5 Principles Of Strategic Beta

"Smart beta," "advanced beta," "alternative beta," "enhanced indexes," "strategy indices," "quantamental indexes"—are the list of monikers describing the intersection of active and passive investing.At Morningstar, we refer to smart beta as strategic beta.

A quick lowdown on the current stock market turbulence across the globe.

5 Questions About The Market Turmoil

Some believe the stock markets have overreacted, others believe the worst is yet to come. Here's what you need to know about the markets.