Investment in gold

Today, everyone is aware that either you need to invest in gold or land to overcome the inflation. But the ever increasing price of gold makes it unreachable for a common man. Therefore, it is high time you start thinking of the alternatives which would make you buy gold eventually at the same time not getting succumbed to the market volatility. Many jewelers have come up with various schemes to invest in gold. As an investor, it is very important to select the right jeweler with good record and name in the market. And selecting the right scheme is the next important thing to do.

There are schemes where your money is right away invested in gold and the gold is accumulated in your account every time you pay. This scheme therefore reduces the risk and gives full value for the money invested. For example, ‘GRT Golden Seed’ scheme lets you accumulate Gold. Whereas, there are jewelers who offer schemes which accumulates money periodically and at the end of the period invests the accumulated money in gold. In addition, there may also be incentives along with this scheme. The jeweler may a month’s installment to your accumulated money and let you buy gold. For example, you have paid Rs.5000 every month for a period of 15 months your accumulated money would be Rs.75,000 and the total money to be redeemed for gold would be Rs.80,000. ‘GRT Gold tree’ is this kind of scheme.  But again, this would be profitable only if the price of gold go down at the time of redemption. In my opinion, I would recommend investors to accumulate gold instead of cash. After all, low risk grade and high return would be the only requirement for all isnt it?

Many other features like No wastage charge, nil VAT and flexible deposit should also be taken into consideration while selecting the schemes.  While some jewelers let you buy gold coins and diamond jewelry at the time of redemption, others don’t. So it is important you compare the schemes of different jewelers before investing.

Start investing and beat the inflation!

Good dayJ

Online Shopping Sites

Shopping has become more fun like it never used to be before. Staying indoors and getting your favourites delivered to your doorstep is what everyone would want in this fast moving world. But beware of the spams too. Double check if the transaction you make is secure or not. I was browsing through a couple of sites and found them interesting with their attractive discount offers and coupons.

Here are some of the online shopping sites worth checking out.

1. Fashionandyou.com

2. Snapdeal.com

 

3. Bagittoday.com

 

4. Jabong.com

 

5. Myntra.com

 

6. Ebay.in

7. Homeshop18.com

8.Freecultr.com

9. donebynone.com

10. flipkart.com

11. bagskart.com

12. Fetise.com

                                           

Buying a share through ICICIDirect

Steps to buy shares through ICICIDirect:

      Assuming you have the demat account, login credentials for ICICIDirect and that you are all set for trading, lets go on:  Goto Equity tab and Click on “Modify Allocation” link. In order for you to trade you should first have 

1. Goto Equity tab and Click on “Modify Allocation” link. In order for you to trade you should first have the fund required in your Demat account. In this page you can see that your ICICI savings account number is linked. Choose your type of investment say, Secondary Market Equity, ETF -> Add the amount you wish to set aside for trading from your savings account. If you give Rs.10000, it means you set Rs.10,000 for trading purpose and the amount will be deducted from your savings account. The gross allocation and Net withdrawal balance will be displayed below.
2. Assuming you wanted to “Cash buy”  10  IOB shares which is around Rs.80 each, you need to    

i)                    Select “Product” as Cash.

ii)                   Select an “Exchange”-> NSE or BSE

iii)                 Enter INDOVE. If you are uncertain of the exact name click on “Find Stock Code” and the select the required stock.

iv)                 Enter 10 in “Quantity”.

v)                  Select “Order Type” as Limit

vi)                 On the right side, Click on “View your limit” and the box will be populated with the amount you allocated. In our case it would be Rs.10000.

vii)               “Limit Price” is when you specify the time when your share can be bought. For eg: You say “Buy this IOB share only when it is Rs.85 or more”.  In that case, you enter 85 against Limit Price. Limited Price should be greater than “Stop Loss Trigger Price”.

viii)              “Stop Loss Trigger Price” is  the least value of amount below which you do not want to trade. In our case SLTP could be 78. Also note that, you can mention SLTP based on ‘previous day’s close’ value only. To know this, click on “Get Quote” and this will show you the rate which you should be giving it as SLTP.

3. Click on Buy now

     

4. Click on Proceed and you can see the stock request being sent to the Exchange.

5. Click on “Order Book” link to see the status. Once the status changes from Ordered to Executed, the stock will get delivered to your demat account in mostly 2 days.

Note: If the performance of the stock for the day does not go beyond the ”Limit price” you specified, your request will get rejected at the end of the day. Not your fault though. You can try the next day accordingly.

6. You can goto “Cash Projections” link to view your accumulated stocks(only the ones in executed status).

Hope this would be useful for newbies.

Do write back for any clarifications and I’d be happy to help you.

Happy Trading :)

Cards versus Payback:

ICICI customers, did you know that your debit cards are capable of helping you in many ways than just getting swiped?  Not only do you buy things for the money you earned, you also get to buy things for the money you spend. This is almost like recycling. Most of the banks offer this facility only for credit cards but ICICI has been providing this for debit cards too for a long time now.

Payback, formerly known as imint is in collaboration with ICICI. The money you spend either by swiping or through net banking is accumulated as points in Payback which has a number of gifts that can be redeemed against your accumulated points. Say you have 4000 points, Payback has a number of gifts categorised for you to choose among them. The categories of gifts in Payback are home & Decor, Electronics, Apparel, Accessories etc. Choose your desired gift and click “Redeem points”. And there, your gift reaches you in about a week well packed and well notified.

You can also plan for a higher price gift and keep aiming for that product by accumulating the points. Or, if you are not interested in the gifts that is listed there or if you think that your accumulated points is not worthy enough for the gifts present, you can go for the vouchers. They offer Fabindia, Addidas, Lifestyle gift vouchers worth Rs.1000 for 4000 points. Certainly these are the best selling ones.

All you need to do this is to check if your payback card is linked with your account. If not do it right away. I recently noticed that ICICI site has included “Reward Points” tab through which you can view the points accumulated in your Payback account till now.

Other banks offer this type of redemption facilities through their credit cards. I have gone through the Citibank redemption catalogue and found it interesting. Most of them are gift vouchers. 

Guess that was useful!

Happy spending, Happy swiping! :)