Want to improve health of your wallet? Here's help

Devang Mehta of Anand Rathi along with Radhika Gupta of Forefront Capital will guide them on how to achieve financial fitness. Mickey Mehta, India’s leading holistic health guru also shares his views on the importance of being mentally and physically fit.

Below is the transcript of the interview.

Q: We all know retail investors have been absent from markets for a very long time. Is there an argument that you can give our audience here that could convince them that equities are not all evil and monstrous and that there is some money to be made out there for some reason?

Devang Mehta: Let me highlight a little bit on the power of equities and what we have seen over a period of last 25-30 years. If an entrepreneur does business he just generally wants RoEs or return on investments of about 18-20% which is realistic. If one invests only in FD the return is around 8%. If you just take a simple average of 20% and 8% it’s around 14%.

Only asset class which has given you a fantastic sort of returns which is beating also 14% is equities. It has given you a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) return of around 17% for the last 30-31 years since the inception of BSE Sensex. I don’t think there is any other asset class which can beat equities if you have a longer term horizon. I am not talking about 30 years, but for a horizon of 3-5 years.

Q: For everyone who is not yet convinced about equities are there any other products that they could use to maximize their wealth?

Gupta: The ideal thing for people and it is hard Devang mentioned that equities perform over a 3-5 year horizon. Some of you have been invested in equities over a five year horizon and unfortunately over the last five year not seen very much out of it. The best idea for people starting out who want some balance of what Devang said is a portfolio approach.

Some amount of debt or fixed income or saved securities, some amount of equities and then some amount of commodities or gold. That balance of the three will yield you something like 14-15% kind of return, but will let you sleep much easier at night, which is something we are all looking for.

Q: Over the course of this entire series we have spoken to a lot of investors and the one thing we hear very often is that they don’t participate very readily in equity markets because they say they don’t have the time. I am sure you have heard this argument on and off that they also don’t exercise very regularly because they cannot find the time. Is there something that they could do while they are at work, while they are investing which we hope that they would be doing? Is there something that they could do on the go?

Mickey Mehta: Most fundamental thing to life is health and wellness. It ensures growth in every area. It ensures evolution and generation of thought, attitude, word, behaviour in every aspect of life. It changes your perspective towards life and living.

It give you immunity, it gives you confidence, it give you self-estimate, makes you an achiever of sorts in every walk of life. I don’t buy this argument when people say I don’t have time, because this is something what you do first thing in the morning all you got to do is pre pone your day just by an hour and life becomes such a smooth sailing affair then.