If you’ve read financial dailies lately, it’s unlikely you’ve missed the term ’operation twist’, describing the RBI’s recent announcement that it will buy long-term Indian government bonds while selling short-term Indian government bonds through special open-market operations. A little trivia While the RBI didn’t officially come up with this name, the move reminded market observers of a similar policy move adopted by the US Fed back in 1961 (and later in 2011, under Fed Chair Ben Bernanke), dubbed ‘operation twist’, apparently inspired by American songwriter Chubby Checker’s popular number, ‘The twist’. In the context, it may be tempting to imagine RBI Chairman Shaktikanta Das grooving to yesteryear-actor Mehmood’s ‘Aoo twist karein’ from the 1960s, but this ‘twist’ isn’t probably quite as entertaining. What this is all about and the story so far On 19 December 2019, the RBI announced that it would conduct special open-market operations, buying long-term government sec...
Keeping pace with terminology in the world of investing can be daunting for most investors, so before we dive right in, let’s spare a few moments to grasp the backdrop and context that have led to the emergence of the term ‘smart beta’, after a quick look at what it is. In a nutshell, smart beta sits at the intersection of active and passive investing. While active investing is an ideology that advocates cherry picking and monitoring investments, passive investing most commonly involves investing in a portfolio of securities that replicates an index, without trying to take advantage of ‘mispricing’. For those unfamiliar with these terms, the following sections should help. The reality of active investing – it’s a mixed bag While both – active and passive – approaches have their merits, they also have drawbacks, and to understand this in a bit more detail, let’s start with active investing, the older and more traditional style of investing, with a focu...