Investing with Indexheads Anish Teli & the Indexheads Team

In this episode I spoke to Prashant Krishna and Praveen Palande about:


The recent SEBI circular mandating skin in the game for managers
Capital allocation sins of ITC, which Praveen and I wrote about recently
Value investing and small caps

And a whole lot more. This was a fascinating and thoroughly enjoyable conversation given the sheer breadth of the topics we spoke about. 

I am on @anishteli on Twitter and do check out the Indexheads newsletter where we write about all things low-cost indexing. If you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did, do spread the word.

This is a really special episode for us because we have the person who inspired Indexheads, Sanjiv Shah on this episode. Sanjiv, for those of you who don't know, was the founder of Benchmark Asset Management which launched the first Index fund in India - the Niftybees ETF. Benchmark was the only AMC in India that had an indexing only philosophy and they were nothing short of revolutionaries. Benchmark was acquired by Goldman and is now a part of the Nippon Mutual Fund. 

In this sweeping conversation with Anish, Sanjiv talks about:


The aha moment which led him to start Benchmark AMC
Early evidence about indexing
His thoughts on ETF vs the mutual fund wrapper
Challenges with the ETF structure
His thoughts on the evolution of the Indian MF industry since his exit
Have index fund fees fallen too low?
Will a standalone index player be able to sustain?
The base case for indexing
Thoughts on smart beta, factor investing
Will passive fixed income funds work in India?
Thoughts on AMCs with both active and passive funds
The right asset allocation
The case for investing gold
Are markets efficient or inefficient? 
On alternate fee models with performance hurdles
Are Indian indices flawed?

And a whole lot more. This was a breathtakingly fascinating conversation given the sheer breadth of the topics Sanjiv spoke about. 

I am on @anishteli on Twitter and do check out the Indexheads newsletter where we write about all things low-cost indexing. If you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did talking to Sanjiv, do spread the word. 

In this episode, I geek out over the less understood and misunderstood world of debt and debt mutual funds. My guest this week is the brilliant Rajiv Shatri. Rajiv is an economist, debt market specialist, and former CEO of Essel Mutual Fund. In this episode we talk about:


The opacity of debt markets
Why the open-ended structure of debt mutual funds and T-day NAV may be flawed. We discuss whether there are ways to get over this which work both in the interest of the fund and investors.
Liquidity of different rated instruments
The role of rating agencies in valuing debt instruments
The pros and cons of listing debt instruments to aid price discovery
How the risk in credit risk funds is similar to small-cap funds but not the reward and why it's not worth investing in credit risk funds
Thoughts on the Bharat Bond ETF
Rajiv's view on longer duration interest rates and the economy
Is this the time to take duration risk?
Equity market cycles rhyme and  if debt market behave similarly

He tweets @Rajivshastri and blogs on www.rajivshastri.com. Post the Franklin episode, Rajiv wrote a series of posts on ET Prime on the various structural issue with the Indian debt markets, debt mutual funds, and possible remedies. The pieces are absolutely brilliant and we highly recommend reading them. 

I am on @anishteli on Twitter and you can also check out the Indexheads newsletter. 

People, we're super psyched that the investing with Indexheads podcast is now finally live. This has been some time in the making. The idea with this podcast is to decode the most important market events with some of the smartest people in the Indian markets. In this first episode, I speak to Pravin Palande, Editor - Markets and Finance ET Prime. We talk about: 


What's happening in the markets. Reminiscing about what went on during 2008
Should you pause your SIPs or continue them? The behavioral advantage of SIPs
Pravin thoughts on whether the retail investors have matured
Have active managers delivered on their promise of downside protection? Thoughts on index funds being a bubble, we had written an Indexheads piece as well.
Decoding the Franklin debt funds fiasco. Check out Pravin's (@lonelycrowd on twitter) recent ET Prime piece on the topic
Thoughts Warren Buffett's decision to sell airline stocks and retail investors penchant to blindly follow superstar investors

Since we were doing this for the first time, the quality of the audio is a little bad in places and we are sincerely sorry about this. As we do this, we'll get a hang of this and we'll iron out the bugs. Also, thoughts, suggestions, brickbats, ideas, we'd love to hear them all, I am @anishteli on Twitter and you can also scream at @passivefool for not fixing the audio. 

You can also check out Indexheads - a fortnightly newsletter letter on indexing and passive investing in India.