How To Diversify Short-Term Risk As Global Volatility Persists

Aashish Somaiyaa: You know, clearly everybody has a risk profile and everybody has an asset allocation or at least everybody should have an asset allocation, which is in line with the goals that they want to achieve and clearly that asset allocation should be devised as per the risk-taking appetite.

So, from that perspective, you are right, that everybody is in a different position relative to each other clearly. And when you look at your asset allocation, let us say you are somebody who is supposed to be 50% equity and 50% in debt, let’s take an example and you will find that, you know, in the recent times that 50 has become 60 or 65 because there has been in last couple of years, things have been on an upswing, last one year not so much. But clearly, in the last couple of years people have made some appreciation.

So, if you were overweight, if you were holding money in equity, but you have had some loan to repay on the other hand, at an asset allocation level it is better that you are neutral to your desirable weightage. You know, hopefully in these kinds of scenarios where we are talking about being cautious, you should clearly not be overextended, that is one thing. Like I briefly alluded, if you are investing at the cost of repaying some loans or something like that, you know, you might want to prioritise that.

Coming to your other question, you know, obviously, so that naturally dovetails with what you are saying, which is that if you are somebody who invests in equity regularly, but then what you are finding that it is time to be cautious and maybe you should be in a large-cap fund or a balanced advantage instead of going at the extreme end of equity.

You briefly mentioned that we are launching products at this point in time. Now clearly, we go through a whole regulatory process and as and when we get approval, we get products out. But you know, our objective is always to beat our corresponding benchmark.

We are not controlling individual investor’s asset allocation, and when people are subscribing to any fund you know, we assume that either they are self-adviced or they are advised by somebody else, who is helping them whichever way. So, we have to assume that people are taking care of their asset allocation. So, when we launch a product, we are not going to take cash calls, our mandate will be to beat the corresponding benchmarks. On the other hand, as far as investors and advisors are concerned, they should be mindful of the desirable asset allocation.