Rohan picked up a seven-year bond and assumed the interest would keep landing in his account for all seven years. Then he spotted another date sitting quietly in the offer document. A Call Date. That one line can change how long his money actually stays invested. Key Takeaways What Is a Call Date? So what […]

Interest rates rarely sit still. A loan that looked cheap the day it was signed can turn into a headache two years later if the benchmark it is linked to keeps climbing. Businesses that borrow at floating rates live with this problem constantly, and one of the older tools they use to deal with it […]

Bond prices do not remain unaffected when interest rates change. For an investor, understanding how sensitive a bond may be to these movements is an important part of assessing interest rate risk. Effective Duration is one such measure. It is particularly useful for bonds whose future cash flows may change when market interest rates move, […]

Introduction Rohan had been putting off one decision for almost a year. Every month, a little more money sat in his savings account doing nothing, while his colleague kept mentioning “12% returns” from something called bonds. He looked into it once, got three steps in, saw the word “demat,” and closed the tab. Sound familiar? […]

Rohan and his cousin Arjun opened Demat accounts in the same week. Rohan is 25, lives in Pune, and holds about ₹1.5 lakh across a few stocks and two corporate bonds. Arjun, based in Dubai, wanted Indian exposure but had not decided whether the sale proceeds should leave the country. They filled in near-identical forms […]

Here is a quick test, and it takes about ten seconds. Do you know how a zipper works? Most people say yes, fairly confidently. Now try to explain it properly. Not “the teeth interlock,” but how the slider forces them together, why it only works in one direction, what actually happens at the point of […]

Kavya is 26. She works at a logistics start-up in Pune, earns enough to split rent without thinking about it, and has decided she is going to start investing properly. She decided that last year as well as the year before. Nothing is wrong. She is not in debt, there is more in her savings […]

Almost no interest rate in the market is set from scratch. Behind a home loan, a corporate bond or a working capital facility, there is a reference rate the pricing hangs off, with a spread added on top for everything specific to that particular borrower. That reference rate is the benchmark. Once you know which […]

Not every transfer of shares, bonds or other demat securities needs to happen through a stock exchange. In some situations, securities can move directly from one demat account to another. This is known as an Off-Market transfer. Such transfers are commonly used for gifts, transfers between an investor’s own accounts, private transactions and certain family […]