Came across a beautiful video and this observation from the video struck a chord:
Life isn’t the final draft. It’s just breakfast over and over. You burn some. You get better.
I don’t write to advocate my ideas; I write to outgrow them.
Came across a beautiful video and this observation from the video struck a chord:
Life isn’t the final draft. It’s just breakfast over and over. You burn some. You get better.
I noticed a strange bump in the NAV history of Bank of India Short Term Income Fund. The fund’s NAV on 3rd November 2024 was ₹27.05. The NAV went up by 1.9% on 4th Nov to 27.57.
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Screenshot from Value Research Online |
I was curious what went on and started digging. To my surprise, there was no news coverage about this at all. Comparing the fund’s October and November fact sheets did not give any clue. After a bit of searching around, I found a letter BOI MF had written to their investors about this. The letter says that the fund’s NAV was reduced in 2022 following a default.
After recovery from selling of shares, the outstanding amounts for Bank of India Credit Risk Fund was Rs. 24.11 lacs and for Bank of India Short Term Income Fund was Rs. 6.75 crs.
In November 2024, the fund has received a settlement. The letter says:
After trying to recover the balance outstanding amounts since the default, Bank of India MF (“the Fund”) finally entered into OTS agreement with promoter group and the final OTS amount of Rs. 9.08 lacs for Bank of India Credit Risk fund and Rs. 2.54 crs for Bank of India Short Term Income Fund was received by the Fund respectively on 4th November 2024. The received amount was dully accounted in the NAV of the respective Schemes on 4th November 2024.
Anyone that invested in this fund before 2022 lost some of their money. I have no problem with that; investors sign up for such potential losses when they invest in debt mutual funds.
What makes me sad is that the AMC chose to not create a segregated portfolio with the Coffee Day NCD (despite the fund’s SID allowing portfolio segregation). Any investor that bought into this fund after the NAV fell in 2022 but before it increased in 2024 would have received this 1.9% rise in NAV “for free.” The AMC is essentially taking the previous investors’ money and gifting it to newer investors. Creating a segregated portfolio would have prevented this unfairness altogether. But, for whatever reason, the BOI AMC chose to not create a segregated portfolio.
I wrote an email to the AMC asking about this more than 10 days ago, but they have not responded (other than an automated reply with a ticket reference number).
This is the kind of behaviour—I don’t know what to call it… laziness, lack of integrity, or incompetence—that an investor should be weary of when choosing an AMC. Bank of India AMC has shown that they will not do what’s right for the investors. It is up to us how we act on that information.
There are bond investment platforms that let retail investors buy bonds directly. Many of these platforms sell high yield bonds issued by private organisations. For debt/bond allocation in a long-term portfolio, can investors buy these bonds?
As an example, let’s look at this high yield bond that pays 10.75% fixed coupon, but available in the market at the yield of 11.415%. (This is just a random example; not a recommendation for/against investing in this bond.)
Screenshot from goldenpi.com |
When I calculated the XIRR for this bond, it came out to an impressive 11.72%. But that’s before accounting for tax. Advance tax is due every quarter on the interest received, so let’s assume that we set aside the cash necessary to pay the tax as soon as we receive the interest. That causes the XIRR to drop.
Effective XIRR of the bond for 30% tax + various surcharge rates (source) |
Some of you may point out that the after-tax XIRR of 7+% is actually great from a fixed income instrument. You are right, but we need to look beyond (the admittedly attractive) XIRR the following reasons:
I’ll likely buy a low-quality high-yield bond to hold in my fun portfolio. But that’s mostly for the cheap thrill of investing in this asset. Such bonds have no place in my more serious portfolios.
A blog post is like a picture. It shows what the author thought at the time of writing that post. Similar to how a picture shows how a person looked at the time of taking that picture.
I am not a perfect person today. Far from it. But I am better today than what I was a few years ago. If I sound like an awful person in one post, that doesn’t necessarily mean I am an awful person in every aspect. Let us not judge anyone based on just one thing that they have said/written/done.
Writing this blog has helped me become a better person. Some of my old posts make me cringe. But what matters is that I am improving over time.