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: signing up for an insurance policy or a health care service would not be enough. This is the time to look at protection and wealth preservation with greater detail. Estate management will now have to get precedence. And the good news is that there is professional help available this time around. Many wealth managers also offer to manage your estate and they are ready to go the whole hog with clients. This could be the year when you could start getting more open about your finances with professionals. Surely the wild spending binges would be out of the New-Year plans for many and rightly so. These are indeed testing times and usually tough lessons learnt in such times go a long way in developing wealth-building strategies.
Many of the experts who have expressed their views in this edition mention that there could be a revival in the coming months, even if it was not immediate. There are several other developments, like stimulus packages and elections that could be triggers for a rally. Possibilities are always around the corner in the investing world. So while the theme of aggressive wealth growth is now well beyond us, the coming year is one where this wealth needs to be consolidated. And some of it kept aside to make most of the next surge that comes our way.
•Vishakha Mulye ED, ICICI Lombard General Insurance
“We would be investing more in equities of very high quality: These would typically be companies that have low debt, are operating in a market with significant demand potential and have strong capacity for cash generation.
On the debt side, we are benefited from lower sovereign yields. Now it is time to move on to high quality AAA bonds. Credit spreads are still comfortably high. We have seen early signs of credit spreads compressing - for instance credit spreads of up to 1,500 basis points have compressed to 700 basis points internationally. Domestic credit spreads currently are close to 400 basis points and they appear attractive. Even spreads on non-SLR bonds are over 100 basis points and are very attractive.
On the personal finance side, it is essential to be clear on your objectives and time-frames of financial requirements and then arrive at a plan. The underlying bearish sentiment is likely to continue till early 2010. Inflation and interest rates are also likely to fall...
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