Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Mutual Fund investing - Know Your Customer acknowledgement

Here's a simple way to check your KYC compliance

If you wish to invest in excess of 50,000/- in mutual fund (MF), you need to be Know Your Client (KYC) compliant. Download the form from www.amfiinidia.com and submit, along with relevant documents (refer the form to know more about it) at any of the 250 terminals across India. Get a list of such terminals from Amfi website. Within a week or 10 days, you will receive your KYC acknowledgement confirming your KYC compliance. Submit a carbon copy of this acknowledgement every time you invest in a MF, along with your MF application form. 

However, if you misplace your original acknowledgement of KYC, or wish to check the status of your KYC compliance if you have carried out the procedures long time back but aren't sure of that now, visit http://www.cvlindia.com/ and click on the link on the site's home page that says 'Inquiry on KYC'. Type your PAN card number and you will get your KYC acknowledgment. Take a printout and simply, submit this. This way of getting your KYC acknowledgment is only possible if you have originally submitted PAN card copy as one of the supporting documents. 

Saturday, December 6, 2008

When is the next wave?

Is it really over? Or is the next wave around the corner? I am talking sub prime here. Yes, the damn thing isnt yet done with us. There are still plenty of unexploded grenades sitting out there in balance sheets of financial institutions in the US. It looks like the economies of the world are going to flounder for some more time.

Meanwhile the US dollar is balancing precariously on the back of the massive US fiscal deficit. With oil prices falling, less petro dollars are going into the coffers of the sheikhs and consequently less money flowing into traditional safe investment havens - US treasury bonds. With less demand for dollars to buy oil, there should be a fall of the dollar versus more stable currencies. However, given the economic scenario of avoiding risk at all costs, there is no equity market worth its salt now. In that scenario, money flows to the perceived safest investment in this climate, which historically is US treasury bonds. So the dollar might be stable because of this balance. Till the time that US fiscal imprudence crosses all boundaries and the pathetic fiscal situation causes a collapse in the dollar. Then we might well see a new world order in currency. In 2009? or 2010?