Monika Halan A few years ago, a friend asked if she could get her friend to talk to me. On the promise of anonymity, he spoke to me. He had made the mistake of following his adviser from one portfolio management scheme (PMS) to another. He said that the firm h... More »
Monika Halan It looked as if the rain would derail the annual Mint Mutual Fund Conclave in Mumbai where every year we debate issues related to the industry and investors. This year since we had the chairman of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council, Bi... More »
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Monika Halan The election was called at 10:50 am by the external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj who congratulated Prime Minister Narendra Modi and thanked the electorate for this verdict. The votes were still being counted but the early morning trends were cle... More »
Monika Halan Ahead of an event, we were gathered in the 25th floor office of the chairman, in the iconic Bombay Stock Exchange building. A building you enter after paying obeisance to the five foot high, eight foot long, one tonne raging bull stationed at the ... More »
Monika Halan The next few generations may be able to dis-inherit the genetic bequeaths of diabetes or cancer or other ailments that parents have passed on to their offspring. Progress in genetics and medicine could make freedom from such bequeaths a matter of ... More »
Monika Halan Banks don’t mis-sell financial products in India. That is the conclusion we can draw from the annual report of the Banking Ombudsman (BO) for the year July 2017 to June 2018, where a tiny 0.4% of the total complaints made to the Ombudsman were rel... More »
Monika Halan We complain about the AC being too cold. Or the coffee machine spewing drain-water. The lifts are slow. The benefits shrink. The increments thin. We groan about Monday mornings. But take that job away and there is sudden sound of silence. The rout... More »
Monika Halan A call from a political party scare-mongered me into checking if my name had indeed been struck off the election list. A visit to the Election Commission site for Delhi told me that all it needed was an SMS to check if my name is on the list—I mes... More »
Monika Halan The bellwether Indian broad market index, the 30-stock Sensex, had its 40th birthday on 1 April. Actually launched on 2 January 1986, the base date was 1979, or that is the day when the value of the index was 100. Forty years later, the value of t... More »
Monika Halan I am signing copies of my book in Mumbai. The store manager and I are sitting in an alcove and doing the signing ceremony, where he hands me the book and I sign while he cracks open the next one before handing it over. Two native European (for wan... More »