Investing

The Pakistan Stock Exchange has delivered some of the highest returns of any emerging market over the past decade. The KSE-100 Index has compounded at roughly 15 to 20 percent annually in PKR terms over long periods, and companies like Engro, MCB, and FFC have delivered multi-bagger returns for patient long-term investors. Yet most Pakistanis … Read more

It is a burning question these days how to retire comfortably in Pakistan. Retirement planning is one of those topics that most Pakistanis know they should be thinking about but almost never actually do until it is too late. I have seen this play out repeatedly in the families around me. A father who worked … Read more

Approximately 9 million Pakistanis live abroad, and almost every one of them maintains some form of financial connection to Pakistan. They send remittances to support families, dream of owning property back home, and want to keep part of their savings invested in the country they grew up in. For a long time, doing any of … Read more

My grandfather kept his entire life savings in National Savings Certificates. He never invested in stocks, never bought mutual funds, and had no interest in anything that involved uncertainty. What he had was a Defence Savings Certificate renewed faithfully every ten years, a Regular Income Certificate that paid his household expenses after retirement, and a … Read more

Understanding mutual funds in Pakistan is one thing. Actually investing in them is another. Most Pakistanis who are curious about mutual funds get stuck somewhere between reading about them and placing their first investment, usually because nobody has clearly explained the practical mechanics of how to actually open an account, which platform to use, what … Read more

If you are planning to invest in a Voluntary Pension Scheme (VPS), you’ll eventually come across two terms that make many people stop and think: Front End Load and Management Fee. The first time I saw these charges, I assumed they were just different names for the same fee. After reading the fund documents and … Read more

There is a question I have asked many Pakistani investors over the years: why did you buy that stock? The answers are almost never “because I analyzed the company’s earnings and found it undervalued.” They are more often something like “my cousin told me it was about to go up,” or “everyone in the WhatsApp … Read more

Most people think of stock market investing as a game of buying low and selling high, waiting for prices to rise and then cashing out. That is one way to make money from stocks. But there is another way that gets far less attention in Pakistan, one that does not require you to time the … Read more

Real estate investment in Pakistan is something almost every Pakistani family has an opinion about. Ask your relatives at any gathering what they think is the best place to put money and the answer will almost always involve land, plots, or property in some form. It is the most culturally trusted investment in the country, … Read more

If you have spent any time reading about investing internationally, you have almost certainly come across the idea of index funds and ETFs. Warren Buffett famously recommended low-cost index funds for most investors. Decades of research have consistently shown that passive investing, buying the whole market rather than trying to beat it, outperforms active stock … Read more