Bad experience with Kotak Securities

To parody an old song:

“Eye eye oh what shall I do, how should I save my skin?”

“I got stuck with Kotak PMS and now look at the mess I’m in!”

I have had a pretty bad experience with Kotak’s PMS. Sadly for me, I got in 2 years ago. A couple of months after I invested, the markets started tanking (and how!). I accept that as systematic risk. But over the past 18 months, returns have consistently remained poor irrespective of whether markets were going south or there was a general spurt in the Indian equity markets. So much for Kotak’s famed research and active management of portfolios!

And now that the portfolio has been liquidated, there is a delay in the proceeds being credited to my account. The cheque should have come in by 7th or 8th July at the latest so that I could have deposited it before 10th and earned interest. As the cheque has yet to reach me, I have suffered interest loss as well as opportunity loss in making fresh investments. SEBI should monitor “T+3″ across the industry, as I suspect there is more violation than compliance- at least in case of retail investors.

I can only rationalize that the “management fees” I paid Kotak Securities each year was towards teaching me a valuable lesson: stay away from Portfolio Management Schemes in general, and Kotak’s PMS offerings in particular. Expensive lesson, I must add.

I would be keen to know if others have had a similar experience with Kotak- or indeed, other such companies as well.

It’s great to be back!

I’ve been plain lazy these last 3 months, and not blogged. Of course, during this time I changed jobs and was traveling overseas for a couple of weeks so I guess I have a half-decent excuse! But to be honest, I’d have to admit that sloth and lethargy did play a role too.

I am not presumptuous enough to assume that I was missed- although it would be nice to think I was.

In any case, a lot has happened over the past 3 months or so around the world and I shall now try and share my unrequited views on some of them.

India’s elections resulted in a perhaps unexpected win for the UPA. More importantly, a lot of the pre-election calculus about pre- and post-poll alliances was proved to be hype- or even irrelevant. The BJP and the Left were all but humiliated, while political stalwarts like  Lalu Prasad Yadav and Ram Vilas Paswan were made to eat humble pie.  As was only to be expected, post-election introspection has resulted in finger-pointing and dirty linen being washed in public.

India’s much-vaunted T20 cricket team made a hurried exit from the T20 World Cup in England. With the exception of Yuvraj Singh, none of our other cricketers made much impact. The younger players were found out by some good short-pitched bowling and the same frailty continued to be exploited by the West Indies quick bowlers on India’s tour of the Caribbean soon after the T20. Happily for us, rain intervened and we squeaked through with a 2-1 win, courtesy the Duckworth-Lewis rule.

Michael Jackson’s life came to a tragic- and sudden- end just weeks before a comeback tour in London. Undoubtedly, MJ was one of the biggest performers in the world of music and dance and the world will miss him. I just hope the media stops trying to generate TRPs from the sleazier details of his life and lets his family get on.

After a spurt in the BSE sensex over a 6 week period starting mid-May, the volatility has returned to the equity markets.

Worries about a truant monsoon are gathering strength. Several parts of India have made up for the delay (if some reports are to be believed) and what began as a 50-60% deficit has reduced to a 5-10% deficit. But several parts of north India continue to reel under a heat wave, with both electricity and water in short supply.