My current portfolio

Since i consult with hedge funds, some of the people (some of the time!) think that i might know a thing or two. Unfortunately, most of the strategies that i research (currency trading, long/short derivatives) fall under 'don't try this at home without supervision' category.

In fact, I don't do these strategies in my personal portfolio in a big way either. Just in case, you are interested in such stuff, please follow my other blog here.

I am sharing what i actually do in my personal portfolio in the hope that it might offer you some pointers. Please apply all the standard disclaimers: what works for me might not work for you. Also, this is a snapshot in time and i am not committing to updating this blog as situations and my thinking evolves.


I am trying to _time_ the market (yes, i have heard that it can't be done) as i have come to believe that Indian markets are driven by hot money chasing past performance. If i am right, emerging markets will continue to behave like commodities and i want the trend to be my friend. I am waiting for Nifty to move above its 50 day moving average.

In the meantime, the money will stay on sidelines in liquid mutual funds. I have opportunistically allocated a whole bunch to NHAI, PFC bonds. At 8.3% tax-free rate (Note: not tax saving, tax-free as in completely free of income tax whatsoever) in a Govt of India enterprise, which you can lock for 15 years, this deal is hard to beat. These instruments will be exchange traded and if there is enough liquidity past the listing, i will allocate more here and make it a default placeholder. Manshu's onemint blog has good analysis on many of the fixed income products and i like his way of thinking.

Long term, i am bullish on wealth creation opportunities in India and the current valuations as i write this are 17x trailing earnings on Nifty. Though not ultra cheap, the market is not expensive either. I don't want to wait too much on the sidelines. As soon as the market gets into uptrend (> 50 day Moving Average), i will very quickly get fully invested in equities.

If you do not believe in technical analysis at all  (this was my thinking 2 years back and i might revert there again :), this is good time to get into equities as valuations are reasonable and you can place bulk of your money in index funds or index ETFs till you find something better.

I have some equity allocation which can be categorised under long term buy-and-hold small cap opportunities. I do not look to time the market here. I have found Rohit Chauhan's rcfunds newsletter service an excellent resource for these ideas. Please go through his blog and if you like his way of thinking, please do subscribe.

I do not like mutual funds and i think structured products are a total scam. More on that later.