Moneycontrol Daily: Your Essential 7

It can hardly be debated that the tactical asset allocation to the best opportunities available is among the key rules of successful investing, especially at this juncture, when the market across the globe is witnessing strong volatility in almost every asset class. Many market veterans and seasoned investors believe in the idea. Warren Buffett’s advice that “do not put all eggs in one basket” is one of the evergreens and best investment mantras. In investing, if one is exposed to only a single country, all one's eggs are in one basket. However, while talking about diversification, one needs to carefully distinguish it from just investing in different asset classes, which even an amateur can do. Read here.

Qualcomm Inc will invest Rs 730 crore in Jio Platforms in exchange for a 0.15 percent stake, joining a pack of big-ticket investors that have grabbed a piece of the digital unit of Reliance Industries. Qualcomm, one of the world’s top wireless technology companies, is the third strategic investor in Jio after Facebook Inc and American semiconductor giant Intel. The RIL unit runs the telecom enterprise Jio Infocomm, India’s biggest, as well as movie, news and music apps. The deal with Qualcomm — the 13th such investment in 12 weeks — takes the total stake that Reliance sold in Jio Platforms to 25.24 percent. Read here.

All that glitters is gold indeed, it seems. Many investors are preferring to park their money in gold in light of the volatile markets. According to market experts, gold is functioning as a strategic asset in an investor's portfolio, given its ability to act as an effective diversifier, and alleviate losses during tough market conditions and economic downturns. It has a safe-haven appeal, which has been on full display in 2019 and so far in 2020, as the yellow metal is witnessing one of its best rallies after 2011. Gold exchange traded funds saw hefty net inflows of over Rs 3,500 crore in the first six months of this year. In comparison, investors had pulled out Rs 160 crore from this asset class in January-June 2019, according to the latest data available with the Association of Mutual Funds in India. Read here.

Johns Hopkins University has joined a growing list of prestigious higher education institutions in the US suing the Trump administration over its "cruel" decision not to allow foreign students to take online-only courses this fall semester. On Monday, the Trump administration announced new rules for international students for the upcoming fall semester (September to December) that requires them to take an in-person class to remain in the country. Many American universities have scaled back or eliminated in-person classes due to the raging COVID-19 pandemic. Read here.

To assure safety while using its range of Macbooks, Apple recently asked its users of Macbook Air and Macbook Pro to avoid covering their cameras while closing the laptop, in a support document recently published by them. This comes after several users reported having cracked displays after they covered their cameras. It was especially so in the case of 16-inch Macbook users, which has a thinner bezel in comparison to other models. Apple warned that, by practising such methods, they could be damaging the display. This is because the clearance between its keyboard and display is designed to have tight tolerances. Read here.

COVID-19 has been punishing for the Indian startup founders, but the bug of entrepreneurship is not so forgiving either. It is this itch which has forced Saurabh Soni to take the plunge giving up his position as a business head at Happy Loans, a Mumbai-based lending startup to start his own venture in the middle of a pandemic. Soni has joined hands with Akhilesh Gandhi, a technology professional to start DigiSparsh, a lending startup concentrating on the healthcare space. Read here.

To redress concerns of black marketing of medicines prescribed to treat COVID-19 patients, the Maharashtra government has made the rules of purchasing these drugs stricter. Now, people will have to produce their Aadhaar cards, COVID-19 test result, and doctor’s prescription and contact number to buy the coveted medicines that are flying off the shelves fast. Serpentine queues have been seen outside medicine shops, with people waiting to buy the drugs. Read here.