In the first part of our conversation we spoke about absolute basics of factors investing and dove deep into the two major factors — low volatility (low vol) and momentum. We spoke about why these factors exist and the explanations, return expectations, and how to use them in an asset allocation framework.

For this episode, we focused on the other two factors—value and quality. We talk about how value as a factor is different from the popular "value investing", how to really measure the value and how to implement them. We also covered what is meant by quality, why it works and if it's a real factor.

Sankaranarayanan Krishnan is a quant fund manager at Motilal who has rich experience designing factor models and managing factor funds.

We hope you enjoy listening to this conversation

Asset allocation is one of those fancy-sounding terms. We all keep hearing about it non-stop everywhere, but very few investors think about it, and even fewer have a sensible asset allocation that works for them. At its simplest, asset allocation is not putting all your eggs in the same basket. In other words, it’s about spreading your money across different asset classes like equity, debt, gold, and real estate. This naturally leads to the question: how do I figure out a good asset allocation. Asset allocation is as much a science as it is an art.

The objective of asset allocation is to help you reach your financial goals. Coming back to the question of how you figure out a good asset allocation, there’s no perfect asset allocation that’s objectively good for everyone. There are multiple approaches, and each has its own pros and cons. For example, a naive asset allocation that has equal allocation to different asset classes is a perfectly sensible strategy in the right context and for the right type of investor.

In this episode, we caught up with Ashutosh Bhargava, fund manager and head of research at Nippon India Mutual Fund. Ashutosh manages the Nippon India Balanced Advantage Fund, among other funds. Given the nature of the fund, he’s thought deeply about the concept of asset allocation and its various dimensions. In this conversation, we talk about:

1. His background and how he stumbled on asset allocation
2. Various approaches to asset allocation
3. Static asset allocation vs. dynamic asset allocation
4. Selecting the right parameters to guide asset allocation decisions and their trade-offs

Dark patterns are tricks used by applications and websites to make users do things they don't want to. They rely on exploiting our behavioural biases and cognitive limitations. We all encounter dark patterns in our daily lives, like:

1. Making it easy to subscribe but hard to unsubscribe. 2. Pre-selecting actions like purchasing insurance, offering tips, payment methods etc. 3. Some e-commerce platforms "sneak" new items that you didn't choose just before the payment step. 4. Hiding or obscuring important details. 5. Using scary and fearful language. In this conversation, Ashish Aggarwal (head of public policy at NASSCOM), Kailash Nadh (CTO at Zerodha) and Bhuvanesh R (Zerodha) discuss how dark patterns are harmful for users and the kind of regulations that must surround them.

The entire transcript of this conversation is available here.