Miss to Mrs: what else to do when changing title

Here is a quick guide on how you need to go about it and the list of documents in which you would need to change your name

Bindisha Sarang, Mint 9/2/2012

source: http://www.livemint.com/2012/02/09215508/Miss-to-Mrs-what-else-to-do-w.html

Life changes after marriage and for many women along with a change of life also comes a change of name. Gwendolene Fernandes, a Mumbai-based teacher, is engaged and is about to get married in a few months to Anson Miranda, a musician and an information technology professional. Says Fernandes, “First I was wondering if I should replace my surname Fernandes with Anson’s surname Miranda after marriage or not. But then I thought I should change it, after all it’s a sign of unity, and also it’s cool.” While this 20-something will go for the traditional and most popular choice, these days many women choose to retain their last name and some add their husband’s last name to it: heard of Aishwarya Rai Bachchan?

While to change or not to change the last name is a very personal decision, but if like Fernandes, you do plan to change your name, you will need to get legal and financial documents updated accordingly. Here’s a quick guide to what you should do once you decide to change your name.

Change of name and marriage certificate

Says Kiran Telang, a Mumbai-based certified financial planner, “There are two ways to change your name. One is to apply for name changed in the state government gazette. If your name change is due to marriage, you can also apply for a marriage certificate at the office of the registrar of marriage.”

Keep in mind that it usually takes a month or two for the marriage certificate to reach you. Marriage certificate is the proof of registration of the marriage and a document that helps you get your new name updated across other financial and legal documents.

Though the time to get the certificate is almost the same, the process varies for marriages under the Hindu Marriage Act and the Special Marriage Act. As per the official portal of the Indian government, www.India.gov.in, “The Hindu Marriage Act provides for registration of an already solemnized marriage. The Act does not provide for solemnization of a marriage by the registrar. The Special Marriage Act provides for solemnization of a marriage as well as registration by a marriage officer.” Since the process varies slightly across states, we suggest you find out about the process in your state to apply for the certificate.

Permanent account number (PAN)

The next step is to ensure that you get a change of surname on your PAN card. These days it’s almost impossible to do any financial transactions without giving a copy of the PAN card.

Says Pankaj Mathpal, a Mumbai-based certified financial planner, “When there is a change of surname post marriage, you need to update your PAN card. The procedure is simple. It’s similar to applying for a new card, the only difference is that you will need to provide your old card number to the authorities. Your new PAN card will carry the old number, but with a new name.”

Keep in mind that you will have to submit your marriage certificate or a copy of the official government gazette, while applying for name change in the PAN card. Even a copy of a joint (with spouse) notarized affidavit will do, to get the PAN updated. Ensure that you inform your employer, chartered accountant and financial adviser about the change in the PAN card name so that your income-tax papers could get updated accordingly.

Banking relationships

The next step is to get all your banking relationships up-to-date with your new surname. Says Meenakshi A., head (operations), ING Vysya Bank Ltd, “In case of a woman needing name change after marriage, a marriage certificate is required to be produced for effecting the same in bank records. Banks as per their internal guidelines may seek additional documentation to authenticate the request.”

Generally, the marriage certificate and the joint notarized affidavit from a notary get the job of name change done in banks. When you visit the bank branch, remember to update the change of address along with the name change request. Here, the bank may ask you for your husband’s address proof as well such as a copy of his passport.

Telang says, “Once your bank statements have your new name and new address, it more or less works as an address proof.”

As far as the affidavit goes, it needs to state the maiden surname, the new changed surname, your photograph and signature as well as your husband’s signature. Usually this notarized affidavit and marriage certificate are needed to change surname on other documents. But keep in mind that getting a change of name at a bank is faster than getting it changed on the passport.

Credit report

Do ensure that you get the new surname on all your deposit accounts as well as any loan accounts. As far as credit report goes, this is one document where you get a respite from updating your name on you own. Meenakshi says, “Any changes in customer database, including name and address, get refreshed every month for all loan customers by the bank to Credit Information Bureau (India) Ltd.”

Passport

If you already have a passport and need to update your post-marriage new surname, you will have to apply for a re-issue of passport and not a fresh passport. Though the application process remains the same, the documents you will need to get a reissued passport due to name change will be different.

For instance, along with marriage certificate, you will have to submit the old passport in original with a self-attested photocopy and a copy of the husband’s passport.

Other documents

Other documents where you will need to update your new surname are driving licence, voter’s identity card and the like. Mathpal says, “As far as insurance policies go, if you are a nominee, ensure that the correct name is mentioned. You don’t want your old name mentioned as a nominee when you have already changed to a new name. That will only increase problems in the future.”

Also, with a new surname and a possibly new address, you will need to get your know-your-client information updated; name change across other financial investments, such as mutual funds and shares will follow.

Telang says, “If it’s a property that you own, get the name change updated. Say you own a house, inform the society about the change of surname.”

Ensure there is uniformity in all your financial documents. Of course it’s not as easy as it sounds and you probably have to spend a month or so to get all this done. But it’s best done sooner than later to avoid problems in the future. And if you are a man who wants to take your wife’s surname along with yours, the process still remains the same.

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Product costs, tax and inflation can reduce real returns significantly; look at these before buying a product

Deepti Bhaskaran, Mint 14/2/2012

source: http://www.livemint.com/2012/02/13210325/Three-faces-of-cost-you-must-r.html?h=B

Though investment brochures often scream attractive returns, the reality is a little different. The sad truth of many retail financial products is: what you see is not what you get. Cost manifests itself in many ways to eat into your returns. Here are the three faces of the monster that you need to recognize to decode the return.

Costs

The most visible face of the monster is in product costs. Typically, charges can be levied in two ways: one, a fixed sum; two, a percentage of the corpus or the value of the investment at the end of each year.

Fixed costs take out a certain pre-decided number from the corpus each time you invest. To understand this cost, let’s look at the National Pension System (NPS) that until recently levied a distribution cost of Rs. 20 for every investment made. Fixed costs fall heavily on small investments, so a distribution cost of Rs. 20 translated into 0.02% of Rs. 1 lakh investment, but 0.2% of Rs. 10,000. This anomaly has now been removed and the costs in NPS are 0.25% of the investment amount.

Costs defined in percentage terms can be levied in two ways. One, a straight deduction from the amount you invest and two, a deduction from the accumulated corpus or fund value. To illustrate a cost of 1% of the amount invested would mean that every year when you invest Rs. 1 lakh, the product will keep Rs. 1,000 and invest the remaining Rs. 99,000. But if the cost is a percentage of the fund value you will need to pay a little more. Let’s assume the fund grows at 10%. So at the end of the year a Rs. 1 lakh investment will become Rs. 1.10 lakh. A 1% cost of the fund value here would mean the company would keep Rs. 1,100 or Rs. 100 more in costs. Over a 10-year period, the first scenario will return Rs. 88,952 more.

Costs drag your net return down and the best way to find out what you get post-cost is to ask the agent or bank how much is the net rate of return of a product, even in an illustration. Says Veer Sardesai, a Pune-based financial planner: “If costs are not displayed or you find it hard to understand how they will affect your investment, just ask for the absolute amount that you will get on maturity, and then calculate the net return of the product. If you are comparing products, the maturity corpus can be a great tool to do so.” On the excel sheet, the IRR (internal rate of return) function can give you the exact rate of return. If you are not excel savvy, just google a compounded annual growth rate calculator and key in the details: amount invested, time period, and maturity corpus. It is the net return that you should concern yourself with. In the example above, a cost of 1% of the fund value translates into a net return of 8.90%.

Tax

This is the next big bite out of your return. Luckily for several long-term products, including Public Provident Fund, insurance-cum-investment plans, equity-linked savings scheme and Employees’ Provident Fund are EEE (exempt-exempt-exempt) in nature. In other words, the contributions, accumulations and maturity proceeds are tax-free.

But for products that get taxed on maturity, you need to look at post-tax returns. For instance, the maturity proceeds from a fixed deposit are taxable and hence even an attractive rate of 10% may lose its sheen after you factor in the tax that you need to pay, especially if you are in the higher tax bracket. For an individual falling in the 30.9% tax bracket, a 10% return gets reduced to a net return of 6.91% after income tax. Taking the example that sucked out 1% cost on corpus every year and gave a net return of 8.90% will further come down to 6.15% for the 30.9% tax bracket and 7.98% for the 10.3% tax bracket. If the product is not tax-exempt, you will need to calculate the post-tax return.

Inflation

Inflation is the silent killer. It slowly reduces the value of your investment without you even noticing it. The most attractive of returns can deflate if they are not inflation proof. In other words, your investment will still be buying you less if the rate of return is less than the rate of inflation. For instance, if you earn a net return of say 6% and inflation is at 6%, then the value of your investment would still be equal to the value of your money when you started because even as your money would have grown by 6%, the cost of consumables would have gone up by 6%. Your real rate of return or inflation-adjusted return needs to be positive to make any meaningful gains from your investment.

In the example above, a post-tax return of 6.15% will come down further to 0.15%, assuming long-term inflation tends to be around 6%.

It is after factoring in these costs that you can arrive at the effective rate of return of the product. Knowledge of what that return really means could be a game changer and recognition of various embedded costs can bridge the gap between the advertised rate and the truth underneath.

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Josh’s Twenty Common Sense Investing Rules

Source: http://www.thereformedbroker.com/2012/01/23/joshs-twenty-common-sense-investing-rules/

I get a lot of inquiries about investment help from people that aren’t suitable for what I do or people who simply don’t yet meet our minimums.  I hate having to turn folks away, especially loyal readers or people that truly need assistance and can’t find anywhere to get it in an unbiased way.

So with that in mind, I’m laying out my Twenty Common Sense Investing Rules.  Please understand that these are not intended to be taken as Iron Law applicable in all situations nor are they meant to be specifically geared toward any one person.  This list of rules is simply my accumulated common sense, learned in victory and defeat (lots of defeat) and it can be applied to a plain vanilla portfolio within one day.

The below is for ordinary investors, not professional traders or those aspiring to become professional traders…

1.  Buy mid-sized and large stocks that are growing earnings and revenue

2. Buy large and mega-sized stocks that are paying consistent dividends and have low debt-to-equity ratios

3. Read the news on your stocks once a week maximum, once a month minimum

4. The moment a stock disappoints you or makes you wish you hadn’t bought it, sell it.  Immediately and regardless of price.  Life is too short to hope a bad decision reverses itself

5. Don’t get In or Out of the market, but modulate your exposure up and down as a function of what you think is happening.  Your guess based on all the available news and indicators is as good as anyone else’s – and it is more important than anyone else’s for sure because it is your money on the line

6. You should be willing to take a 20% drawdown on every dollar you have in the stock market.  Obviously being down 20% is not the goal, but it’s the reality – it can happen at any time.  It’s not a permanent loss but you need to invest as though it could be

7. Don’t buy stocks trading over 30 times earnings or under 7 times earnings – something is wrong in both cases.  Stay away from anything not trading on a US exchange.  Avoid the 52-week low list – a loser is a loser

8. Don’t buy stocks with market caps under $500 million unless you are playing and can afford to lose 100% of that money

9. Sell any stock with a controversial development or red flag no matter what.  Let someone else be the hero that swoops in on a mispriced, misunderstood security.  You can cheer them on from the safety of the sidelines.  Earnings restatements, auditor resignations, massive unexpected earnings misses, filing delays, fraud allegations etc are all automatic sells.  Let’s not act like there aren’t 8000 other stocks to choose from in the market

10. Use ETFs to own sectors that are in favor as opposed to individual stocks, when a huge positive trend becomes apparent – you’ll get the upside without the single-stock risk.  The aging population and increasing demand for energy are big, fat pitches – it’s hard to swing and miss if you own big swathes of these industries via an ETF, make your life easier

11. Avoid all mutual funds except for asset allocators (balanced funds or go-anywhere can be very useful for investors).  Anything based on a discipline (value, growth) or a sector (tech, financial) or a cap size (large, small) is going to underperform its benchmark over the  long-term, mean revert versus its peers and cost you more than you need to spend in internal expenses.  This is fact not opinion

12. Don’t try to be a trader unless that’s going to be your full-time gig.  Trading as a hobby is not the same as being a trader – and it’s less fun than you might think.  If you’ve decided to become a trader, find a method and stick with it until you can do it regularly

13. Pay no attention to people who are always pessimistic.  The dirty secret is that even when things are terrible, they aren’t that bad.  2008 was the worst sell-off and economic conundrum in 70 years and it only took 18 months for the market  to come all the way back.  If you fell asleep in 2007 and woke up now five years later, your diversified portfolio including dividend  income and unrealized gains/losses looks like nothing ever happened at all

14. Pay no attention to people who are always optimistic.  They are selling something.  if someone can’t admit that things suck every once in a while, their cheerfulness has an ulterior motive.  Or they belong in an insane asylum

15. The financial media wants you to think you are missing out on something and that you need to tune in or click to get up to speed.  Pay attention only if you are generally interested and get some entertainment value out of it, most of the time the headlines and segments are dreamed up by editors and producers who need something interesting to talk about each day.  And that’s fine, everybody has to earn a living – but don’t think anyone is keeping you informed as a public service

16. Don’t follow gurus. Don’t buy software.  Don’t buy DVDs. Don’t listen to "Gut Traders". Read books by and about people who’ve been successful in the market – but only if you’re interested. They won’t help you become a better investor if you don’t care that much to begin with

17. Remind yourself about the difference between investors and traders: Investors make trades when necessary, traders make trades in the course of doing business – that is what they do for a living and your goals are different than theirs.  You don’t get paid out on closed positions or a daily p&l statement.

18. Don’t trade for excitement even though trading can be exciting at times

19. Don’t trade angry or for revenge (this stock owes me!)

20. When you finally do become wealthy, hire other people to do this for you and watch them.  Go about enjoying the short time we all have left on earth away from the screen. Kiss your kids and play tennis and read books and  get drunk during the day just because and go to Australia for a month and buy that car you drove in high school – fix it up and take your sweetheart for a ride. Don’t spend that time reading about inverse correlations between German bund yields and the gold/oil ratio.

Look, the market always goes up given enough time.  It is very hard to find a decade during which returns were negative even though we’re just coming off one now.  Stocks go up three out of four years and declines of twenty percent peak-to-trough are extremely rare (declines of 50% are even rarer still and are always a buying opportunity).  So for new or smaller investors the name of the game is to stay in, do smart things while you’re in and avoid blowing up. It’s that simple.

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source: Fwd Email

Few Trading Rules using Technical Charts which may be of use to Pure Traders! Investors should stay away from these. Trading Charts if used sensibly can be utilised for Long Term Investors also.

1. Forget the news, remember the chart. You’re not smart enough to know how news will affect price. The chart already knows the news is coming.

2. Buy the first pullback from a new high. Sell the first pullback from a new low. There’s always a crowd that missed the first boat.

3. Buy at support, sell at resistance. Everyone sees the same thing and they’re all just waiting to jump in the pool.

4. Short rallies not selloffs. When markets drop, shorts finally turn a profit and get ready to cover.

5. Don’t buy up into a major moving average or sell down into one. See #3.

6. Don’t chase momentum if you can’t find the exit. Assume the market will reverse the minute you get in. If it’s a long way to the door, you’re in big trouble.

7. Exhaustion gaps get filled. Breakaway and continuation gaps don’t. The old traders’ wisdom is a lie. Trade in the direction of gap support whenever you can.

8. Trends test the point of last support/resistance. Enter here even if it hurts.

9. Trade with the TICK not against it. Don’t be a hero. Go with the money flow.

10. If you have to look, it isn’t there. Forget your college degree and trust your instincts.

11. Sell the second high, buy the second low. After sharp pullbacks, the first test of any high or low always runs into resistance. Look for the break on the third or fourth try.

12. The trend is your friend in the last hour. As volume cranks up at 3:00pm don’t expect anyone to change the channel.

13. Avoid the open. They see YOU coming sucker

14. 1-2-3-Drop-Up. Look for downtrends to reverse after a top, two lower highs and a double bottom.

15. Bulls live above the 200 day, bears live below. Sellers eat up rallies below this key moving average line and buyers to come to the rescue above it.

16. Price has memory. What did price do the last time it hit a certain level? Chances are it will do it again.

17. Big volume kills moves. Climax blow-offs take both buyers and sellers out of the market and lead to sideways action.

18. Trends never turn on a dime. Reversals build slowly. The first sharp dip always finds buyers and the first sharp rise always finds sellers.

19. Bottoms take longer to form than tops. Fear acts more quickly than greed and causes stocks to drop from their own weight.

20. Beat the crowd in and out the door. You have to take their money before they take yours, period.

Few Additional Rules:

MONEY: Never trade with money you cannot afford to lose

TREND: Always ride the trend and never try to decide a trend

SELECTION: Always select the stocks, for there are always bullish stocks in a bearish market and bearish stocks in a bullish market.

TIMING: Never initiate your trade at the opening bell, wait for a market to make initial high and lows

QUANTITY: Always while trading keep the amount same in each trade and not the quantity, ex: if have trade 50000/- in one, trade 50000/- in another rather than trading 100 shares in each trades

LEARNING: Blaming market is trying to hide your mistakes from yourselves,making fool of one’s self, thereby losing an opportunity to learn, markets are never wrong, the blame lies with trader.

INTROSPECTION: Always introspect at the end of every trading day, next day will work wonders.

R/R RATIO: Never ever enter a trade where the risk to reward ratio is less than 1:4

NO OF TRADES: Always trade in 2 to 3 stocks at any given point of time, how lucrative the market be, be master of some than being jack of all, keep buffering profits, you’ll find stock markets a wonderful place to be in…

STOP LOSS: Stop loss is essence for trading, never trade without a stop loss

AVERAGING: Averaging has no place in day trading, either u get out of the trade with the stop loss getting triggered or get the target

SUCCESS: Always use trailing stop loss, when the trade initiated, starts bearing results, to get maximum profit.

GREED: Always be ready to take the profits home, if the initial trades have worked for you, be ready to go home , do not trade for the broker

CONFIDENCE: If the markets are not making you confident do not trade, just for the sake of trading , wait for clear signals

RUMORS: Never trade on news or rumours, always follow the levels, remember, news does not make levels, it just triggers levels.

LEVELS: Never get panicked or exited by the happenings on the screen, stick to the levels and stop loss, else you’ll always end up loser

***

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Manas Chakravarty, Mint, 24/8/2011

source: http://www.livemint.com/2011/08/23221928/What8217s-the-correlation-b.html

Everybody knows that the growth in the gross domestic product (GDP) this year will be lower than last year. We also know that it will lead to lower earnings growth. The question is: how much lower? Real GDP growth in fiscal 2011 (FY11) was 8.5% and this fiscal, according to the latest estimate by Morgan Stanley, it’s going to be 7.2%. The government says it’ll be 8% or so.

Assuming it’ll be around 7.5%, how much lower will the earnings growth be? Citigroup Global Markets Inc. has brought out a report, The Asia Investigator— Where to with Earnings? that explores, among lots of other things, the relationship between GDP growth in the Asian nations and the growth in corporate earnings. Specifically, it finds out the impact of a 0.5 percentage point decline in nominal GDP growth on the corporate earnings growth. Note that it takes nominal and not real GDP because “top-line and bottom-line earnings are a nominal phenomenon, not real”.

The Citigroup analysts find that for India, a 0.5 percentage point downward revision in nominal GDP growth is associated with a decline of 2 percentage points in corporate earnings growth.

Well, assuming a 1 percentage point decline in real GDP growth estimates and no change in inflation expectations for FY12, that translates into a mere 4 percentage points decline in earnings growth. Citigroup estimates show that Sensex growth projections have been revised downwards from 23.6% in July to 20.1% in August. If the computation is correct, then, the necessary downward earnings revisions have more or less been done.

However, the chart shows the nominal GDP growth in the last six years along with the growth in Sensex earnings. As you can see, there’s hardly any correlation.

Another metric should appeal to the pessimists. The same Citigroup note shows that while currently its Country Earnings Revision Index is 1.16 standard deviations away from its mean, it was 1.68 standard deviations away from the mean during the 2000 downturn, 2.07 standard deviations down in 2008 and 1.38 standard deviations down during the Asian crisis. Simply put, according to this metric, earnings revision still has some way to go.