Alpha Ideas

This guest post is written by Vasanth Kamath of smallcase, a  Bangalore-based fintech startup.He explains his investing thesis and his product offering

What is thematic investing?

Picking individual stocks is very risky for retail investors like you & me, as we might not have full knowledge about the company or access to tools required to analyse a particular stock. Instead of analyzing stocks, thematic investing could work better.

Thematic investing is the most natural way to invest. The process starts with identifying a particular idea or theme which one can relate to.

For example, if petrol prices are going down then investing in auto stocks based on expected increase in automobile demand could be a theme.

Similarly, if one thinks that e-commerce is becoming a big market in India, then investing into e-commerce related logistics companies could be a good theme.

Investing thematically ensures that you understand why you are investing into a set of companies while making sure that your investments are aligned with your beliefs and ideas.

How to invest with smallcase

smallcase is a portfolio of upto 20 stocks representing a theme. Every theme has a rationale attached to it which explains the idea and research behind the theme.

It helps you understand why a particular theme could outperform in future. You can also see how a theme has performed historically through charts.

The platform helps you plot the performance chart of a theme for any specific time period of your choice – 1M, 3M, 6M, 1Y and 2Y.

Here is how the investment process works on the platform

• Choose :

Explore from our line-up of over 45+ smallcases to find the one you like best. You can select a particular type to see all the thematic portfolios under the same.

For example, Government Reforms type has portfolios like The GST Opportunity, Smart Cities and Rising Rural Demand.

Current trends type has Monsoon Cheer and Banking Privately portfolios.

While browsing through themes, you can also sort and select a theme based on 1year and 1month returns.

• Buy :

Once you select your smallcase, you can read a detailed rationale and see the stocks covered in the same and the theme’s historical performance. For buying a theme, you just need to specify an amount more than the mentioned minimum investment amount and buy all stocks in it in 2 clicks!

• Track :

We help you track your investments easily by setting a custom index starting at 100. Say you invest into Monsoon Cheer smallcase which represents companies expected to benefit from a good monsoon, platform creates an index starting from 100 for this investment.

If the index shows a value of 105.5, you immediately know that your investment is up 5.5%. Also, all smallcases are rebalanced on a quarterly balance to ensure they continue reflecting the theme accurately. When there is any change to a smallcase you have bought, you can update your smallcase to the same in 2 clicks.

• Pay : 

smallcase charges a flat fee of Rs 100 when you buy a smallcase. Irrespective of the amount one invests, we will charge only Rs 100. This turns out to be a one-time fee of 0.2% on an investment of Rs 50,000. This is significantly lower than investing into mutual funds and paying expense ratio of 1-2% every year.

Do visit our website to know more.