The book offers a crash course on finance, and more

A booming stock market and the prospect of hordes of youngsters pocketing their first pay cheque have created a thriving market for personal finance books. These range in sophistication from tomes which spill the beans on the secret sauce of successful portfolio managers, to slim volumes that stop with extolling the virtues of compounding that many of us studied at school.

Financial Felicity by Rachna Singh sounds an looks like a book on personal finance. But this is a book you clearly shouldn’t judge by its cover, as it is really a crash course on everything that has transpired and is transpiring in the world of finance. What marks it out from academic books is its irreverent and interesting take on difficult subjects, its extremely brief treatment of them and its very contemporary commentary on everything it takes up.

At the end of this 201-page volume which you can riffle through in a matter of hours, you’ll find you’ve sprinted through 46 hot topics on finance and can now claim more than a nodding acquaintance with them.

If you’re the academic type, this book may leave you a little breathless for the rapidity with which it whirls you from one subject to another, as the author cuts a breezy swathe across issues ranging from insolvency resolution, to candlestick charts, to Masala Bonds, to Jallikattu, prohibition and bitcoins, rounding it off with the inevitable note ban and GST. This staccato treatment doesn’t offer much room for delving very deep into the weighty issues chosen.

But as a journalist, I still found the book very engaging. While grammar Nazis may take issue with mixed metaphors and the abundance of adjectives, the book does score a ten for catchy headlines (‘Fist-fight on Bond Street’, ‘Whipping Soured Assets into Shape’) and flamboyant writing.

Broadly, I found the essays on subjects I don’t know well (Jallikattu, prohibition, league sports) insightful, but those on the subjects I do know (personal finance, markets) a little shallow. Strangely enough, the driest chapters of the book are those towards the end dealing with recent changes to direct tax provisions.

The author has made considerable effort to ensure that she offers the latest available information the many evolving developments she discusses, be it the GST, insolvency code or cryptocurrencies. But in some cases, this preoccupation with the here and now could reduce the shelf life of the essays presented.

For instance, the chapter on ‘The Game of Crude Oil’ discusses the current dynamics of oil prices using shale exploration, OPEC cuts and India’s recent renewables push, but skips any discussion on the infamous Peak Oil theory that set the stage for the recent price action.

The chapters on the stock and bond markets deal almost wholly with developments since April 2017 – foreign investor behaviour and the fisticuffs on g-sec prices. But some discussion on the FIIs’ long-standing love affair with India and on the debate on the phase-out of the SLR (Statutory Liquidity Ratio) would have added heft to these essays. The book’s tendency to cite statistics without attributing a source can also be an impediment to using it as reference material.

Given that only a few sections deal with personal finance, the book may not allow you to wrest the management of your money matters from your portfolio manager, as it intends. But it is nevertheless an excellent buy for those who are not steeped in finance or business news.

Non-finance managers or professionals keen to stay updated on finance, or management students hoping to get a bird’s eye view of everything that is current in the world of finance, may find it a great read.

Money matters AARATI KRISHNAN HINDU BUSINESS LINE

A guide to market matrix

Financial Felicity Making Sense of Money Matters Rachna Singh Stellar Publishers 210 pages; Rs 295 With internet around can any information escape a few taps on the keyboard? Apparently so, as many millions have figured out. The cyber space is liberally loaded with dead ends or, more plausibly, wrong‘uns. It is a risk that is difficult to shrug off when cruising down this highway.

Yet, as a vast nation such as India gets more educated, the demand for easy-to-understand pieces has exploded. It is not a novel demand either. Early in the 20th century, as competing claims of ...

Subhomoy Bhattacharjee Business Standard

About the Bharat Coin

The Sunday Guardian met a senior Indian Revenue Service officer, Rachna Singh, author of a recent book, Financial Felicity: Making Sense of Money Matters. We spoke to her about the meteoric rise in the value of Bitcoins. “Digital currency is the new buzzword in global financial circles,” she acknowledged. She said, “Digital currency would be a money saver in a big way, but crypto-currency like Bitcoin should move over as Bharatcoin is coming.” Rachna said, only 16.8 million Bitcoins are “mined” and are in circulation. The mining of Bitcoins has been capped at 21 million by 2040. “The supply is limited while the popularity and demand are on the rise. Many e-commerce sites are accepting payments in Bitcoins. The ATMs that exchange Bitcoins for dollars have been set up in San Diego and Vancouver. It can be traded at specific exchanges.”

“The fact that Bitcoin sale and purchase can be done without the layers of security clearances adds to its popularity,” she said. “The closure of Bitcoin exchanges in China this summer and clamping down of security measures have not dulled the lustre of this digital currency.” This currency, she said, received a shot in the arm when on 1 April the Japanese Parliament passed a law that accepted Bitcoin as a legal method of payment. It is true that Bitcoin is not an accepted legal tender in India, says Rachna, but it appears that the government may not be averse to a digitally-issued Central bank currency along Bitcoin lines. It looks like the birth of a “Bharatcoin” may be a distinct possibility in the near future.

The Sunday Guardian

Fresh perspectives on current economic scenario

Rachna Singh’s latest book, Financial Felicity: Making Sense of Money Matters, presents some interesting and fresh perspectives to the contemporary economic scene that is full of strident voices making dark prophecies of the economic doom. In the midst of this frightening situation, Singh is the voice of reason that should force the reader to take a deep breath, sit back and analyse the market trends and economic scenario with objectivity, untouched by media-hyped political skirmishes.

So is the talk about impending recession not true? “There has, undoubtedly been an economic slowdown,” Singh says “and several domestic as well as global factors have contributed to this slowdown but to lay the blame on initiatives like demonetisation and the GST is missing the woods for the trees.” These initiatives will have a salutary impact in the long-term, she insists. With 92 per cent cash-based financial transactions in India, any initiative to target a shadow economy is bound to be met by not only resentment and resistance but also overt criticism. A senior officer of the Indian Revenue Services (IRS), she is equally sanguine about the impact of the Goods and Service Tax (GST) and feels it is geared towards zero corruption. Since it is a major restructuring of the tax regime, it is bound to have its share of ‘meddles and muddles’ but the provisions and procedures would evolve and stabilise eventually.

However, Financial Felicity ... goes beyond the hotly debated issues of demonetisation and the GST. The book is a collection of more than 46 articles that delve into and examine a host of present-day economic issues like banks with more NPAs, consolidation of banks, buybacks, mergers, universal dole, impact of prohibition etc. Articles on Bitcoins, candlestick dojis, witching hour, Masala bonds, Non-Banking Financial Companies (NBFCs) jostle for attention as do the articles on stock market trends in the section titled, Dalliance On Dalal Street. Policy Posers scrutinises policies like Bankruptcy Code, RERA and Finance Act with neutrality that is sadly missing in the current-day economic narrative. The book is geared at not only demystifying economic issues for a reader untutored in economics but also helps him to find a happy financial niche where he is comfortable wresting money control from portfolio managers.

This is Singh’s second book on financial issues. Her first book Penny Panache: Piecing the Economic Puzzle, was published last year.

THE TRIBUNE