Hansi Mehrotra – Don't Let Overconfidence Bias Lure You into Concentration Risk

Guest profile  

Hansi Mehrotra runs the financial literacy and investor education blog, The Money Hans. She was named in LinkedIn’s inaugural global 10 TopVoices for Money & Finance. More recently, she was included in the LinkedIn TopVoice and PowerProfile for India in 2018 and the year before, the same site’s PowerProfile for Finance in India. Her profile on that site has more than 289,000 followers. Hansi has over 20 years of financial services industry experience, mostly in online delivery of investment research and consulting for the wealth management industry across the Asia-Pacific region. She set up and led the same region’s wealth management business for Mercer’s investment consulting division in Australia and Singapore. And, Hansi has led a number of projects in India, including the design of investment options for the National Pension System. She holds a BA from the University of Delhi, a graduate diploma in applied finance and investments from the Securities Institute of Australia (now FINSIA), and is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA). 

“Just because we didn’t have data doesn’t mean it never happened.”

- Hansi Mehrotra

Prelude to tale of woe and Hansi’s motivations  

• She finished her degree at the University of Delhi 
• by correspondence because she come from a very small town.  
• Her desire to learn finance was due to a “lack of money”. Also, her father had lost a lot of money and she wanted to know why.  
• While earning her graduate diploma in Australia, she worked as a waitress part time.  
• Hansi’s drive and skill for self-study came partly from her father, who urged her to help her less academically inclined brother with his work  

Asset allocation and sizing of position – went to Zero 

• Hansi and her husband started a joint-venture company to research tax-effective agriculture schemes.  
• They became well-known for writing the best research reports on how to receive tax benefits from planting trees, such as in orchards, vineyards, and for pulp and paper.  
• She joined Mercer and convinced them to employ her husband as a consulting to research agribusiness as an asset class globally.  

• With the knowledge they gained after reading Rich Dad Poor Dad, by Robert Kiyosaki and became interested in passive investments and income streams. 
• Thinking about starting a family, they discussed Hansi leaving work and needing support while raising children and managing the home.   
• They invested their combined life savings into the top rated agribusiness schemes that they had recommended to their clients. 
• Investments included pulp mills in Tasmania (specifically