Investing

A few years ago, a family member of mine was genuinely proud of herself for keeping her savings in a bank account that paid a decent profit rate. She had PKR 500,000 saved and was earning around 7% annually on it, which felt like a solid return. What she did not know was that at … Read more

Building an investment portfolio from scratch in Pakistan felt, to me, like trying to assemble furniture without an instruction manual and with parts from five different boxes. I had read about stocks, I had read about mutual funds, I knew bonds existed, gold was something my family already had opinions about, and somewhere in the … Read more

Gold investment in Pakistan has always carried a weight that goes beyond finance. It sits at the intersection of culture, emotion, and economics in a way that almost no other asset class does. Mothers save gold for their daughters’ weddings. Families store it as a backup for difficult times. And for decades, it has quietly … Read more

A friend of mine spent months trying to figure out the perfect time to invest in the stock market. He would watch the KSE-100 daily, read market news every morning, and convince himself each week that the market was either too high to buy in or too unstable to risk money. A full year passed. … Read more

The moment I decided I actually wanted to invest in the Pakistan Stock Exchange, I hit a wall I had not expected. I knew what PSX was. I understood the basic concept of buying shares. But when I tried to figure out how to open a stock brokerage account in Pakistan, I found myself buried … Read more

I remember the first time someone mentioned the Pakistan Stock Exchange in a conversation I was part of. Everyone around the table nodded as if they understood perfectly what was being discussed. I nodded too. I had absolutely no idea what it actually was, how it worked, or what it had to do with my … Read more

I have a friend who put a decent chunk of his savings into a “guaranteed high-return” investment scheme a few years ago. Someone in his social circle vouched for it, the returns sounded amazing, and he thought he had finally found a smarter way to grow his money. Within eight months, the scheme collapsed. He … Read more

The first time someone suggested I invest in a mutual fund, I nodded along like I knew exactly what they were talking about. I didn’t. I went home, looked it up, and ended up more confused than before. Every explanation I found was either too technical or too vague. Terms like NAV, expense ratio, fund … Read more

When I first thought about investing, I assumed it was something you did after you had “enough” money. I didn’t have a clear number in my head, but I imagined it was somewhere in the hundreds of thousands. So I kept waiting. Waiting for a raise, waiting for a bonus, waiting for some magical moment … Read more

A few years back, a friend of mine inherited some money after his father passed away. Not a life-changing amount, but enough to matter. He wanted to invest it wisely, so he started asking around. One person told him to put it all in stocks. Another said bonds were safer. A third person told him … Read more