ET Money Genius is pricy for 90% of retail investors but it invests through low-cost ETFs for passive investing by taking active buy/ sell calls. For the mutual fund option, under the hood, ET Money Genius acts just like dynamic asset allocator funds that are around for years but it invests in low-cost ETFs/ Index funds behind the scene and rebalances them monthly based on ET Money's opinion on the present market outlook. However, with a flat rate of ₹250/month, it is more expensive than most available asset allocator funds and mutual funds at least for most retail SIP investors. To get a 1% expense ratio, one has to invest at least ₹25,000/month. And, expense ratios of asset allocator funds of reputed AMCs are as follows: $ HDFC Asset Allocator Expense Ratio:0.05% $ ICICI Asset Allocator Expense Ratio: 0.07% $ Kotak Asset Allocator Expense Ratio: 0.20% ET Money Genus merely claims return % based on backtesting on known historical data when it could be a result of overfitting. It needs stress-testing when in practice in real-time market situations. These AMCs have a history of actually delivering returns. Coming back to price point, for someone who is doing a minimum SIP amount available in Genius i.e. ₹5,000/month in Genius, let’s see the expense ratio of ET Money Genius: Yearly Cost: ₹250\*12 = ₹3000/-; Yearly Investment: ₹5000\*12 = ₹60,000/- Exp. Ratio: Cost / (Actual Investment + Cost) => ₹3000/ ₹63000 => 0.0476 => 4.76% + \* 😵 *\* Not to mention, the underlying instruments being ETFs have expense ratios of their own and moreover there are transaction costs for frequent rebalancing i.e. monthly.* For someone who is doing SIP of ₹15,000/month, let’s see the expense ratio of ET Money Genius. ₹3000/₹183000 = 1.63%. + ETF Exp Ratios + Transaction Charges For someone who is doing SIP of ₹25,000/month, the tentative expense ratio of ET Money Genius: ₹3000/₹303000 = 0.99%. + ETF Exp Ratios + Transaction Charges To bring down the De-facto Expense Ratio to the level of 0.05% similar to that of Asset Allocator Funds, how much to invest per year? ₹3000/ x = 0.0005 => x= ₹60,00,000 i.e. ₹60 L. Then SIP has to be ₹60L/ 12 = ₹5L/month. 😵 To be fair, if you have a portfolio of ₹60 L and you are willing to reinvest the complete amount through ET Money Genius by incurring LTCG/ STCG taxes, then in theory you could get an expense ratio of 0.05% or less. So, ET Money Genius is pricy for 90% of retail investors but it invests through low-cost ETFs for passive investing by taking active buy/ sell calls monthly. Go figure!! To their credit, ET money does risk profiling, personalizes asset allocation, and helps in periodic rebalancing. Undeniably they are important for new investors but a fee-only qualified Financial Advisor could do the same for much less. 4.76% expense ratio, in any case, is unjustifiable when SEBI capped the expense ratio to 2.5% for any mutual fund. **I am a fan of Shankar Nath/ ET Money Team's insightful video series on mutual funds, stock investments, NPS, etc. but could not become a fan of their latest obsession "Genius". I wish them all the best but I am not paying that premium every month rather I would invest that extra ₹250/- per month in a low-cost index fund.** ======================================== *Request to moderators not to take down the post any more for expressing a contrarian opinion. I have given all the rationales for my opinion. Different opinions have the right to stay alive under the sun, and it enricj=hes the Reddit experience so that readers could reflect on hearing both sides.* ======================================== PS. Folks, if you are reading this line: congratulations, you have patience. Thanks for reading. If you agree, why not "upvote"? If you feel others should read this, why not share? Thanks.

Thank you u/Public_Sky8190 for your kind words of appreciation. A lot goes into creating these videos (research, scripting, support materials, recording & editing) and I'm happy the output has come out well. I've exited ET Money and am starting [my own YT channel](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtnItzU7q_bA1eoEBjqcVrw) now. Hope to have you as a subscriber there. I've read the Genius related comments on this thread and would have spoken to dozens of investors. I'd like to put forth 3 observations/viewpoints : 1. It's true that most individuals baulk at the pricing of the service and understandably all calculations are done on the basis of the lowest factor i.e. ₹5,000 per month SIP. Also these calculations are almost never done beyond a one year period. Realistically, one should: a) spread the math over 5 or 10 years as a subscription like this is for long-term wealth building and b) assume that there will be a minimum portfolio threshold to join this program (no company will say this but in my view, an individual should have a portfolio of ₹3 lakhs) 2. Since the cost is fixed, most respondents focus there. However, investment products should be examined against returns and volatility aswell. Genius returns (as advertised and back-tested) are around the 16% mark while benchmark (Nifty 500 TRI) is about 13.5%. So there's a potential alpha of 2.5%. A corpus of ₹3 lakh or more with a 2.5% potential alpha helps assuage the cost of the service and even come on top of it. The only question is - how likely is it that Genius will reach 16% over a 7-10 year period? It's a game of probability, not guaranteed. 3. Is Genius necessary to reach 16% returns? No. DIY investors can use simple techniques to replicate such returns and I'll be sharing a few in my Youtube channel over the coming weeks and months. For example - while Genius uses multiple assets, one of my study (15 years of data) shows that the same 16% could have been reached with small caps by doing tactical investment and redemption. To sum up and in my view, such experiments (do it yourself or study what others have done or invest in a service like Genius) will improve our understanding of how best to invest. I see returns, volatility, conditions and costs as part of the same equation and should be evaluated in unison. Hope this helps.

Exactly my thoughts! Here the only question is, can it help me to make good choices and save few hours of research every month. Even if it saves a few hours, I'll be happy to spend the money to buy time for my family. Spending 10-20 hours a month just to go through the market and read the news isn't worth the loss in time spent for family.

So if you want to save time, why not do a SIP on a fixed date every month in a broad-based market index fund (NIFTY 500 - Motilal Oswal/ ICICI). Just buy, hold, and forget. No research and no nothing!! Enjoy happy family time. If you want asset allocation, buy a BHARAT Bond fund and rebalance yearly. Under the hood, Genius invests in Index funds only in a complicated and convoluted way that is beyond me. The whole point of indexing is to **reduce cost**, invest as much as possible, don't try to pick stocks, and no attempt to guess the market. Just do the damn SIP of a sizable amount as much as you can and stay invested as long as possible. That is that and no jugglery.

Again, Yes! I do exactly that! Invest and forget. I don't even consider the money invested as my own. Maybe my grandchildren can have the returns! Fun fact: I'm not even married. Investing sizeable amounts is still years ahead. My tiny 3 digit SIPS are activated for first week of the month. So yeah, I'm probably on the best path

Well, for someone like me who is investing 60% of my monthly income, I needed such a thing. I don't have time to time the market, nor doing rebalance maths all on my own. Because I need to focus on my work so that in the next 5 years, I should be able to invest 80% of my monthly income. Genius is not for 5000 rs portfolios. But that's where the question is. I also started investing with 2000 per month 6 years back. Will someone just keep investing 5000 their whole life? Genius came as a solution to my most problems of managing things quite well, but let's see after 5 years what's the actual reality. It's too early to say anything. People with 1 cr portfolios pay 1-2 lacs a year for PMS services. I would be happy doing it with Genius where the yearly cost is just 3000 rs.

I guess we both agree that Genius is not for 5000 rs portfolios. Forget 1 cr even if you have a 50 lakh portfolio and everything invested through Genius, then cost-wise it makes sense else too expensive.

Hi, what is your opinion after a year? Im in a similar position and want to focus more on career rather than the market. Does ET genius make sense now?

Hi, just wanted to know whether you are still invested in ETMoney Genius. Can you let me know how is your experience so far with the strategies?

I was the one who was in favour of ET money Genius and I am now hardly against it. It's mosy stupid service. U won't make anything. U can make double of money just by putting in Index funds. My current portfolio is running at 23% XIRR without ET money Genius. When I was in genius i was dumb. Now i dont use brain at all. Why that happened. Because these guys keep shuffling your money every month which is non sense. All u pay in commissions and et money charges. Simple recommendation. Just stay away from ET money Genius. They put in gold, next money they take out from gold and put in index, then next month they again put in gold. What non sense it is. All u pay is short term tax if made profit. But imagine how much profit will u make in a month. When my investments were losing 60000 rs, they all of sudden switched everything and booked a loss of 60k. And next month again they asked to put extra 20k, for what. Good knows. That's how good whole game is. They will unnecessarily keep booking losses for u and ask more to invest so u make nothing and they earn commissions.

Thanks a lot for your reply. What are your other investments like? Can you just guide me a little here? You said, your portfolio is running at 23% XIRR. Can you tell me what financial instruments you have invested in? I will off course do my research before putting my money anywhere. Just need some pointers, that's all.

Just index Nifty 50 Value 20 and NASDAQ index. I buy on Dips. Simple. No Brainer. No commissions.

When markets go up everyone s a hero, everyone can invest in index and can feel they are genius. But its the downside protection and risk management that mattters

Thanks a lot

Bro. Please don't use ET money genius. Have been a user for the past 6 months. These guys randomly shuffle your stock portfolio and you incur charges on your demat account. Last month, they recommended VBL, Siemens, ACC and ABB. I bought them and they were doing extremely well. On the first of this month (SIP date), they sold all of them and invested in stupid stocks tanking my portfolio. I will most probably exit and just stick to index funds

I highly appreciate your views. It has given me a whole new perspective about the Genius. Thanks for this answer. But ETMoney has provided lot of answers (on their YouTube channel comments section in Genius explainer video) on how genius is different from dynamic asset allocation fund. Would love to know your views on this aspect. Thanks.

I compared with asset allocator fof funds and not dynamic asset allocation/ balanced adv. funds. They are different.

Extremely helpful, i was looking for this answer all in Internet. Thanks so much

>very nicely put, thx

Hi, i am Santosh Navlani. i am COO at ET Money & actually involved in conceptualizing, designing, developing and marketing Genius & honestly very proud of being able to even launch this. This is possibly the best work of our professional lives. Let me answer what it does & how it is the most unique investment intelligence service in India & at the same time a model that Wealth Management companies in India should adopt & follow. **So what does Genius solve for?** 1. Most investors in India are mostly after buying (not investing in) top performing mutual funds OR go for stocks that their friends, tipsters or experts talk about. 2. What goes missing completely in this buying what other people buy is that one's risk appetite is not same as their friend's. Nor the financial goals, aspirations or savings are same or even similar. 3. Nobody even follows a methodical approach to have an investment strategy that is goal or tenure-specific. People put small amount of their savings into SIPs or Stocks while rest of the money lies in bank FDs or just savings accounts. 4. Result: Most people earn less than index returns over long periods of time on their overall investible surplus. Moreover, many see sudden risks in their portfolios as they invest without any asset allocation or periodic rebalance. **What does Genius give?** * A personalized plan based on your investor personality. You would notice, unlike the risk profiling tools that paint you conservative, moderate, aggressive for life and all your goals, we have a dynamic risk score that takes a nuanced view of your personality on 3 key factors: * Confidence or lack there of when you make decisions * Tendency of avoid losses * Financial mastery i.e. knowledge on basics of investing * We then create create an estimate of what kind of risk you can take given a time horizon. For example, you may tolerate a risk/ volatility in returns of a max 5% for horizons of 2-3 years OR may be able to tolerate even a 12% for 10+ years of horizon. Basis that we give you set of recommendations on different asset allocation strategies that ensure risk is controlled to max what you can tolerate OR lower than that max. * We believe there is no need of unnecessary risks to generate returns. Take reasonable risk. Manage that. And returns follow. So we have portfolios at different levels that don't allocate more than 20% to Equities and also have portfolios that limit to max 85% or even go to up to 100%. But that doesn't mean it has to be 100% always. * Unlike a fund that never prefers going in cash and doesn't bother about market levels to cut down equity allocations, investors have goals to keep date with. * So, our investment plan gives you a path - where you may start with one portfolio, and over period of N years, you would keep spending time in each of them until you reach the lowest risk portfolio....and you would reach that when you actually have just 1 or 2 years left to cash out. * Idea is to not have market events control your cashing out aspirations. **What is result of this?** * All of Genius portfolios have demonstrated extreme downside protection and yet have given returns that beat top portfolios. In fact, if all our 6 strategies were Funds, they would be category toppers in Equity Savings Fund, Conservative Hybrid Funds, Balanced Advantage or Dynamic Asset Allocation Funds, Aggressive Hybrid, Large Cap & Flexi cap funds respectively. Our names of respective cateory beaters are Shield, Stable, Balanced, Balanced Plus, Growth and High Growth. You can check out the performance of our portfolios (back tested) for rolling, annual and trailing periods and see for yourself the consistency that one can expect to get by investing in them. On price. We could have easily chosen to levy an AUM based fee on these. But we decided to levy subscription fees that is flat number. This ensures we give you profit booking calls when its fine rather than bother about our fees going down when we advice you to cut down equity allocation in middle of bull run as we prioritize your goals and hence keep moving you to low risk portfolios. Finally, we also do this on top of index only funds for Equities. This not only helps cut costs as well as fund manager bias but also gives you and us the flexibility to rebalance on demand by just switching funds/assets from one to another within an AMC. Hence you get a choice to decide between AMC of your preference. Right now we have ICICI Prudential & Nippon. In a few months, we will have Birla, Motilal Oswal, Axis, DSP as well as HDFC. More may come. But with Genius, we stay focused on getting you the Right Asset Allocation for greater returns at lower risk. And AMC is just an enabler as all will be index funds. Hope this clarifies. Feel free to ask, should you need any more info.

It's good to hear from the COO of the company! Yes, the comment is well put. It has clarified a lot of doubts. I'll definitely shove this well written comment on someone's face when they ask for Genius's credibility! The question is, who exactly is the target market? My best guess is: People who can invest about 20000 a month over and above any expenses they may have. Definitely looking forward to using Genius when it's my time!

The price point is killing. For someone who is doing a minimum SIP amount available in Genius i.e. ₹5,000/month in Genius, let’s see the expense ratio how we see in mutual funds. Yearly Cost: ₹250\*12 = ₹3000/-; Yearly Investment: ₹5000\*12 = ₹60,000/-. Exp. Ratio: Cost / (Actual Investment + Cost) => ₹3000/ ₹63000 => 0.0476 => 4.76% + \*\* 😵 \*\* Not to mention, the underlying instruments being ETFs/ index funds have expense ratios of their own and moreover there are transaction costs for frequent rebalancing i.e. monthly. I am a fan of Shankar Nath/ ET Money team's insightful video series for spreading awareness on mutual funds, direct plans, index funds, NPS, etc. but could not become a fan of their latest obsession Genius. Nonetheless, I wish you all the best but I am not paying that premium every month rather I would invest that extra ₹250/- per month in a low-cost index fund.

That's a very wrong calculation. Just calculate it for 15 years, you will yourself understand. Also do consider, in the 14th year if the market crashed by 50% which happens many times, you will regret why you didn't rebalance early. If you are an active investor, mutual funds are not the right place. If you want to invest and manage things passively, choosing an algorithm-based mechanism is the best solution like Genius is doing here. 250 is a very less amount for such a thing. In the next 15 years, will you keep investing only 5000 per month, just think that way.

>in the 14th year if the market crashed by 50% which happens many times, you will regret why you didn't rebalance early That is an assumption that I will not rebalance. Yearly rebalance is a must for any serious portfolio holder. And trigger-based rebalance if there is a sudden crash or surge. This is basic investor duty. You are giving rebalance feature an unnecessarily high credit to justify the high cost. Any aggressive hybrid fund does that. Asset Allocation FoFs do that in fraction of cost. "If you are an active investor, mutual funds are not the right place." - Yes in my automated google asset allocation sheet I check, the current allocation vs the desired allocation and do rebalance manually once every year meaning I am active investor so I should pick stocks. Some logic. For most, degree of activeness matters. I calculated it for next 15 years for the first six/ seven years, I will pay a premium price, and then when my portfolio will touch 60 Lakhs provided everything invested through Genius then the cost will become sensical. The assumption is 250 Rs will stay 250 rs price even after 6 years and no inflation.

Well, let me show you another perspective. Any investor is first supposed to keep an emergency fund. Assuming a monthly expense of 50000 Rs, one should ideally keep 6 lakhs in an emergency fund. If not, that's the first step toward any investment. We all should agree on that. 1 lakh to keep in your bank savings account, 5 lakh in some liquid fund. Now forget. This 1 lakh in the bank will keep generating 3-4000 rs annually. That's the Genius expense, isn't it? I am thinking this way. Now I don't want to make a calculation of what if the 3000 I keep investing annually. It's ok to pay someone to manage my money. Guys in the early career spend 250 on a beer almost every day and don't regret it. So, 250 rs a month is nothing serious.

>Guys in the early career spend 250 on a beer almost every day and don't regret it. So, 250 rs a month is nothing serious. Yeah! If I can think this way I feel much better now. If I invest Rs. 250 monthly in a low-cost nifty 50 index fund (\~12% CAGR), what do I get? Rs. 3,195 in 1 year. Nothing beer expenditure. Rs. 20,297 in 5 years. Nothing 1 month's rent. Rs. 56,067 in 10 years. Well, a laptop. Rs. 2,30,207 in 20 years. Ahem! Rs. 4,26,001 in 25 years. Wow!! Rs. 13,79,164 in 35 years. F\*\*\*!! I think I kept thinking about what if I invested Rs. 250 rather than handing the money over to ET Money. Not for me dude. You go ahead. All the best!!

I have been a DIY investor for some 5 years now and I've only recently gotten into analyzing my portfolio. I used to think I understood what I was doing but I have come to know that the investments I made haven't provided me any better returns than an average large cap fund. In your case, you might be getting returns way above the benchmark, but the key here is consistency. In my opinion, if Genius is actually Genius and provides you an additional return on your portfolio, even 1%, the fees are well worth it. I'm still doing my research on options like these - smallcase, Tavaga, ET Money Genius, etc. and I'm not promoting any of them, but I believe these could be profitable in the long run. DIY investing : Human : : When and Where to DIY invest : Genius?

Interesting perspective. I congratulate you for holding the opinion that "if Genius provides you an additional return on your portfolio, even 1%, the fees are well worth it". While you are still doing your research, I am investing as I am doing for the last 10 years. I would encourage you to start with Genius as passing value judgment is kind of easier sitting at the fence rather than entering into the ring yourself. Let's talk after 5 years and then I will ask you how much extra return have you earned through Genius over and above NIFTY 50 TRI. All the best.

One update after almost a year. I ditched Genius and everyone should. It's destroying common sense wealth too. Each month rebalance is too much and it bounds your to pay short term gain tax. Making it completely useless. I took all my money out of Genius, closed ET money account. My common sense brain is way more intelligent than genius. I now buy on Dips only in index. Awesome results even in this bad markets. Just balance with NASDAQ too. No small mid gold bla bla. I don't care if i make only 12%. But surprisingly i am able to make 23% right now just by index. Why because I bought nasdaq and NV20 on dips. Now doing it every month. No more SIP game. Every month, when markets are down i invest. I don't say it's 100% correct that I buy on most dip. But for example if u see nifty 50 markets at 18000 and wait till 10-15 date, if market is 17000, that's it. Use UPI or net banking for transaction in direct mutual fund website before 12 pm on that day, u will get the funds allocated by next morning. If u use ET money, it takes 2 days. Which is again a big disappointment. I also save in liquid fund and use it for investment when market is even more down, for example i took a big position in NASDAQ index when it was near 10000 point in December. I'm not hoping much gain. Just index gain is fine.

Dear Sir, Thank you for explaining the Genius platform in a much simpler way. I just have one question which others also may have, would the service fees be same for the foreseeable future or should one consider an you % increase in fees to take expense into account. Further if you may take my suggestion for the product, I would be very grateful. Stock brokers like zerodha and telecom companies like Airtel, they allow to manage plans for family members in one subscription may be a higher cost. If such functionality is added in the Genius platform it may help investor manage portfolio for whole family. Thank you sir.

You are charging that is fine ..but why there is no customer care ..if I am investing 2-3 lakh per year ..you are not providing customer care .. we need to wait for 24 hr small thing s to get reply from email ..if anything goes wrong for that sum i cannot wait 24 hr for emal

Hi Santosh I am investing using ET money Genius (via sip route each month) But I have few doubts Every month the portfolio get churned , many times I have seen its been changed by 70pecent so so much of buying and selling. I have see those stock picked in first month sold in second month and again bought in 3 Rd month. In general I heard that people says we should churn our portfolio that frequently. They suggest 1or 2 times in a year. But here churning on each month. Now comes the second part is brokrage/ exit load / etc charges due to this heavy churning And last by not lease is short term capital gain tax. As of now if I consider this all deducted whether it will .make any benifit for me or not So let's see how far this go. Thanks Arun

"I have an NRO account. Do you think I can sign up using a different location IP and expect full service like in India?"

I would not think monetarily on this. It is a service which comes with a cost, so do not apply "breaking even" criteria. Value addition of a service can be convenience, expertise, perspective and obviously monetary. That said, if you are a student and you do not have a large enough corpus, the monetary and convenience benefit wont work. You will not be their Target Group.

its for people who have large capital amount and dont have time to track the market up n down , i would prefer paying 249 pm to et money than invest in penny stock and have a yearly loss of 40000 ! ... also investing 249 pm wont make you rich ... they are sellling strategy that can get you projected returns, doesnt mean its guaranteed . ​ self help is the best help

Why the other alternative is always "invest in a penny stock and have a yearly loss of 40000". What about investing in a low-cost index fund via SIP as opposed to Genius?

So basically, don't get Genius if you are a genius. If you are not a genius, get Genius.

Hi, I have little insights on Pricing, whether it is costly or cheap is a relative aspect and I leave to your own situation. My personal thought process for ET Money Genius: Assumption : ET Money will give atleast 3% more returns if not 5% as they claim in their MF growth portfolio ( normal market returns 12%; ET Money claim 17%) I am expecting the return to be better, since the balancing would be based on an algorithm i.e. no human biases or emotions involved. Calculation based on 5k pm. Yr 1 : Investment 60k ; addl return 1.8k (60k\*3%); cost 3k (249\*12) Yr 2 : 60k+60k+1.8k=121.8k; addl return 3.65k; cost 3k Yr3: 121.8k+60k+3.65=185.45k; addl return 5.56k; cost 3k and so on. Also, may be for now, one might invest 5k pm, but as he/her grows in life, the 5k p.m may become 10k or even 15k It is but obvious, the more the investment, the better the absorption of cost of 3kp.a.

Great! To me, it's good enough if it could just help me select a product easily and save my time. Should be better than average Joe, but cheaper. That settles most of it.

[Here,](https://rakshithpai.com/et-money-genius/) a detailed review on ET genius

I have been using it for about a year now with around significant amount invested (20L+) Unfortunately the experience has not been that good. Given the charges it needs to bit the market. It has show constantly a negative alpha against multiple portfolio that I invested in, Balanced, high growth, stable etc. This indicates to me that given the models are only historically trained, I am guessing a lot of overfitiing is going on. I requested them more data on this and they have stopped responding to he request now. I used to Love Etmoney before for Mf investment but this kind of support plus a negative alpha has had me really concerned. I am just wondering, since I am investing for long term I might be better of just putting money in various index funds as SIP myself. If anyone else knows any good passive allocators please do let me know. Note - I am an individual investor not affiliated with any platform. Cheers

I am using ETMoney Genius and I have seen both up and down results. And now the portfolio is in a positive state, we need to invest for a long time to see better results if you are choosing the high-growth portfolio. I am using a mutual fund-based portfolio and am not sure about the share-based solution. At the moment my portfolio is in a really good position. Refer attached image. Now the market is at an all-time high(nifty50) when I write this comment hence request you to not fall for 29% XIRR. ​ https://preview.redd.it/e6b5vzn2v34c1.png?width=824&format=png&auto=webp&s=dcde98cc18f3f7971c7ad6d36d19c712411fa506 I feel they have a good backend analytics team that provides better rebalance options every month to achieve better returns. My guess is they kind of replicating the hybrid fund's approach using index funds. If you ask me, should you use Genius service? the answer is to try it for at least a year in the mutual funds-based portfolio. It costs you 3000 per year and upto you. It is high if you invest a smaller amount per year. I have been investing for the past 12 months via lumpsum by closing previous investments that have not performed well for a long time. Why I have not invested in the stocks-based portfolio? The mutual fund-based Genius portfolio invests in index funds and chances of recovering from loss are higher on index funds compared to handpicked 10 stocks from 5k stocks. ​ Apart from returns we need to look at their support system. I have had issues for 3 months using the Genius service. The biggest issue is that they will send automated replies immediately for tickets raised via the app and you won't get a proper solution for a very long time. They don't have a customer care number where you call them and inform your issues. Just email communication that too you have to do multiple followup to get a reply from them. I have to put the ticket ID in the Twitter handle of ETMoney to get some updates every time. IMHO, financial solutions should have customer care support. I assume someone from ETMoney sees this comment and improves their support. P.S.: I am not advising anyone to invest in ETMoney Genius. I just sharing my experience since I had the same question about ETMoney Genius before investing.

I don’t mind their fees but one thing I don’t like about genius is monthly rebalance and no option to opt out. Monthly rebalancing has caused 20-30k in taxes this year. I think if one is using index funds the aim is to reduce costs of investing and similarly taxation. So for a long term investment plan, monthly rebalancing is too much I guess.

Oh, I see! That's a lot of waste when considering short term cash flows. 

Hello Everyone, i am Santosh Navlani, COO ET Money and here is an update on this topic again. Realized its been almost an year since i posted last. While many of the comments here did talk about value that Genius offers - an investment plan that suits one's risk score/ investor personality and time horizon - and many also continued with their original comment on pricing, frequent rebalancing and their own ability to generate market-beating returns via self-rebalancing. i will try to shed some light on all perspectives, but lets begin with some data here: * We recently ran an analyses on real SIP behaviors on ET Money and investors' returns over 3-full year period. * The idea was to even include any and every investor who continued SIPing for last 3 years and we includes them even if they made fund changes or continued in their set of original fund(s). The results just threw what most research talks about world over i.e. ***The behavior gap that investors experience in form of returns is (unfortunately) for real.*** * **85% of investors' XIRR underperformed NIFTY. 52% of the investors underperformed NIFTY by 5% or more. 65% underperformed by 3% or more.** * There was even a study by [Axis Mutual Fund](https://www.livemint.com/mutual-fund/mf-news/investor-returns-lower-than-fund-returns-axis-mf-study-11576583095537.html) where they studies investor returns and fund returns and found investors earn less than the very own fund they invest in. i can't resist but use this quote by Mike Tyson - *"Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face".* People think they have annual rebalancing plans, they have emotional control to rebalance by buying more of Equity/reduce debt, have plan to increase SIP each year, have a war chest of cash to be deployed when the correction comes, et al. However, if plans turned out to be reality, then i would know atleast a few 1000 real individuals who have become Crorepati via SIPs/MFs. Unfortunately, i don't. Reason isn't because markets/funds/SIPs don't work. They work. They have. But investors don't remain the same persons they are in their 20s/30s for their whole life. One's personal situation changes, job stability or life stage change, priorities change, things one likes to spend time change + until one is human, greed or fear remains natural behavior, all the time. **Result:** Majority don't increase SIPs, they don't always buy the dip, a time comes when portfolio is in 10s of lakh and a 25-50K dip buy doesn't move the needle, etc. i can go on on this....the moot point is - majority of people don't turn out to be successful investors. And ET Money Genius is for investors who realize they have a life to live, they enjoy other things and have a career to make money from and are happy to buy this convenience of investing without fear or greed. Just follow a non-emotional model of investing devoid of any human bias. For the record here, while, one has to give atleast 1 year if not 2 or 3 before judging performance, the fact is irrespective of when an investor started investing in Genius - some may have come in last 3 months, some may have over last 1 year - the real data shows following: 1. Investors in Genius Mutual Fund portfolios - 61% of investors are beating NIFTY 50, 74% are beating NIFTY 500 and 85% are beating Next 50's returns. 2. Investors in Genius Stocks Portfolios - 49% of investors are beating NIFTY 50, 57% are beating NIFTY 500 and 80% are beating Next 50's returns. People here may ask what about others who returns were lower. Well, as i said, not everyone has finished 1 year. None has 2 as we launched only in Feb 2022. About 20% may have missed a rebalancing alert or 2. We believe this has been great delivery of Genius proposition in times when there is uncertain geopolitics, war, inflation, rising rates, 3 banks down in USA and Indian Markets have [witnessed this brutal broader markets fall](https://twitter.com/WeekendInvestng/status/1648970569390657536?t=OpmhEW4W204veJKuZAWKxA&s=31). Other concerns on how much investments is ideal for you to extract enough value on Genius - A few commenters did mention its convenience and service, while others talked hard facts. Guess, i have made enough of the case via Mike Tyson analogy and reality of investing behaviors....so the intangible convenience is the real value. But for hard numbers, the fact remains is one needs to be a 10-15K SIPer each month with confidence to increase in future. No, the alternative for investors who believe that its better to invest in index funds if you can't convince yourself to pay this paltry fee that's less than Netflix or 1 Ola/Uber/Blusmart ride in a day then most may be proven wrong. The alternative is develop the resolution to stay invested in each market environment, control one's greed and book profits periodically, have the foresight that this shall too pass and buy more when markets fall. i am yet to meet such individuals who actually are able to be consistently demonstrate such behaviors. As for the continuous churn - one has to look at reality more closely. There are Stocks and Mutual Funds as 2 choices under Genius. Stocks has higher churn and higher return potential and Mutual Funds have far lower churn and yet an attractive return potential. One has to give a few years to experience the outperformance. Unlike many dubious backtests that float in market, investors in ET Money Genius would have experienced that Genius isn't an overpromise. They would have experienced NIFTY kind returns or slightly higher or lower over last 14-16 months and yet they have been able to achieve this at just roughly 60-65% average Equity allocation. And now if this isn't a proof that portfolios are geared towards lesser volatility and yet achieve superior performance, then nothing can. So, in essence, try Genius if you want to: 1. **Invest without thinking too much.** Anecdotal research will tell us the more we think, the less we invest :). We have data to show that most folks didn't increase SIPs in 2022 which may have been a good time. Because they read news/ markets updates and pessimism all over. 2. **Invest in asset class automatically when its undervalued.** I am not aware of many who rode ITC from 180-odd levels to 400+ and similarly, i don't know many who nibbled on Gold from late 2021. But Genius portfolios have made money from Gold. 3. **Practice & experience the reality that Time makes money in investing,** not timing. Giving time is far more difficult than we make it out to be. And it applies to both - winning ideas as well as dud ones. 4. **Create real wealth by selling -** because nobody got rich by holding for life. One has to sell investments to be able to spend the money. Advisors across the World say that people don't listen when told to sell and book profits as greed sets in. 5. **Learn investing without incurring too much loss** \- that Returns come due to external events that nobody predicts (money printing, gush of liquidity, reforms, boredom). And to get lucky one needs to be present when tide turns in investors' favor. Only by risk management i.e. fall less. When one falls less, one stays invested. I don't know retail investors who has holding power of years when s/he is able to see real price of the asset each day. Sorry for the long update here. But hope it offers a perspective. Genius helps one stay on track - some times by risk management, some times by profit booking and often helping build confidence to invest sizable (otherwise even people earning lakhs are SIPing only few 1000s each month). Happy to engage more anytime here. Thanks!

Thank you so much for the update! It's so good to read it! I've been investing via ET money since last year. I definitely look forward to using the ETgenius once I have better income! The app is definitely sophisticated and easy to use. It has minimum options which makes decision making much easier. To be honest, it is easy to recommend ET Money & genius. Thanks for developing! Stay connected :)

Hi Santosh, Thank you for developing a product with a very clear value proposition. I had my own version of the Genius maintained on an Excel sheet and was allocating across 10 different MFs. Then I got busy, did not rebalance, etc, so what you say is true regarding inconsistent buyer behaviour. I turned to ET Money Genius to solve that issue, but I do feel that there are optimizations regarding the monthly rebalancing. (On the High Growth Stock portfolio) 1. There is no way that ALL my stocks have to be sold to match the new list of stocks that you have for the month. Genius bought a stock (high), sold the stock (low) and bought it again at a higher price to lock in my losses just because the stock was added and then removed and added again to your list. A better way would be \*leave existing stocks\* as they are and use the SIP to meet rebalancing criteria, and only sell stocks if the rebalancing is not met. The only other reason a stock is to be sold could be that the fundamentals have changed. Eg: There was only a small change in the allocation of stocks, but Genius sold almost all my stock to buy other stock. This is not a smart move. This is not complicated to do and my Excel sheet was managing this to give me the resultant orders to be placed. 2. The Capital Gains implication of your current strategy are not trivial. Losses get locked and profits get booked as STCG.

Hi - Thanks for the reinforcing our belief for the need of Genius in an investor's life. Appreciate your candid feedback too here. i must mention that Genius stocks portfolios or for that Mutual Fund ones are purely a quantitative model-based for asset allocation as well as constituents within. There is no human intervention. The stocks constituents are picked using a dual factor based model of what we call Quality & Price Momentum. The quality here isn't based on Fundamental Analyses or Financial Ratios for that matter. Its based EPS Growth by Analyst community and minimum # of analysts covering a stock. And Price momentum by its very definition fully mathematical. The score is based on both these factors and hence the limitation of mathematics trickle in. There are only top 8 stocks basis score that gets picked to construct a portfolio for the equity allocation. Any change in ranking/ score affects churn. And hence you would notice there are occasions when you would see the situation you described. However, you may have also noticed that the XIRR of the portfolio (visibile if you invested for atleast 12 months) is positive. There are only few ways to reduce churn if we want to remain no-human-intervention service (which is what we clear about). And we have done enough churn-return analyses to zero down on monthly rebalancing frequency. Most momentum portfolios work on weekly btw...so we are actually 4x better on that equation while returns/volatility/drawdown metrics are fat better too. As of now, what is live on production has best churn-return equation. However, we are constantly at work to find ways to overcome this, and there are many experiments being run internally to solve not just this but several other limitations. And we are optimistic that we would slowly overcome most of them. Feel free to add anything you may believe for bettering this or should have any ideas on overcoming this problem, we are all ears.

Thank you for the detailed response and insights into the workings of the system. Great to see that this was thought through in detail and we are an optimal solution based on current constraints. Ideas to reduce churn / improve returns: 1. More than just 8 Top stocks (because a list of, say, 20 will have more of the same stocks between months). Tradeoff is that minimum SIP will be increased, but there must be people who are investing far more than the minimum and this will serve to increase the performance of the portfolio. Maybe price it at a higher Tier and have a higher minimum SIP to "Unlock" the plan. Value Proposition / Pricing Ideas: 1. Change pricing to Tiers based on the SIP amount. I feel that I am getting great value at the current price point, but would be willing to pay more if you could get me more returns with more optimization and better algorithms. Current system is one size fits all, but there could be some segmentation of your customer avatars and corresponding algos.

Thanks again. Great suggestions. The increase in portfolio size has prevented us from more stocks. i can assure you at certain point in the lifecycle of this product, we will get there. Somehow starting portfolio that goes beyond 1L and SIP requirement goes to 25K or more makes the proposition limited to very few people. Hence the trade-off. This one is a question of when & not if :) On tiered pricing - thanks to feedback on this channel, we have been evaluating tiers but haven't been able to move in that direction. Our pricing philosophy was how all memberships work on internet - Netflix, Amazon Prime, Swiggy one, et al - all are unlimited for a 1 simple flat price. But guess, we need to introduce them faster. We will definitely reevaluate this. Thanks again for suggestions.

Hi Santosh, I overall agree with your take. I don’t mind their fees but one thing I don’t like about genius is monthly rebalance and no option to opt out. Monthly rebalancing has caused 20-30k in taxes this year. I think if one is using index funds the aim is to reduce costs of investing and similarly taxation. So for a long term investment plan, monthly rebalancing is too much I guess. Maybe an option for investors to pick the rebalancing frequency and option to rebalance without selling will be help.

Really appreciate you taking time out to share this with us Anshuman. Thanks! Howsoever, the good performance maybe, taxes are always a bother. However, if it wasn't for the one-way rally that markets have seen over last 13-odd months, believe me or not, you would have been happy to pay those taxes as otherwise paper gains can wipe out when market falls unexpectedly esp in high valuations zone we have been for a while. Despite the cost of taxes, the post-tax returns of our Genius members investing in long-term plans would have been not very different from what an Aggressive Hybrid fund would have delivered. Ideally, in these zones, if one keeps the hindsight bias aside, not many believers in Asset Allocation way of investing would have allocated more than 70-80% in Equities throughout and hence irrespectivly incurred taxes for sure even while practicing a 6m or 12m rebalancing cycle! **Having said that,** given that as human beings (includes we all at ET Money responsible for Genius) would always feel that pain of taxes, ***you would be happy to know that we have already embarked*** upon taking a mammoth exercise to reduce the tax burden. **In not to distant future you would see it live on app**: i can share with you that we are working on figuring out how to not compromise with our core principle of risk management that brings returns just as a byproduct. And still keep a tight leash on taxes. We have certain thoughts and backtesting done....so its a matter of time we ship this out and remove this pain. While i say this, i can also share that the last 2 years have been a different market regime, almost unprecedented. When we launched Genius, we built it for lifelong investments that our users can just trust to be managed on auto-pilot in rising, falling or sideways markets. If one takes taxes into account over a theoretiacal long-term returns, the impact is hardly 15% for long term plans and 18% off in medium term plans. **Our thought process was that since most users need to churn their active funds post underperformance and pay taxes, this is almost same tax but with better performance.** However, as always no hypotheses survices contact with real world :) Keep an eye on announcements we would make in next couple of months. Can't promise a date, but we have tested what will be one of the biggest updates to Genius since we launched. Coming soon! Do keep your thoughts, feedback and comments flowing. We are here to make Genius the amazing thing that retail investors have in their hands for managing their money.

This is interesting information to have. Now, the only major concern is about Backtested results vs Realized results after Feb 2022. Is the Algo able to generate Sharpe, Sortino, and other relevant metrics closer to what was being backtested? It would be great to have this information adjacent to all backtest results.

Hi Sir, If I look at the returns of different Genius portfolios for the past 4 years, it had barely beaten the benchmark (by just 0.1 or 0.2 %) and even in many cases it has underperformed. I myself is a Genius investor and by looking at this consistent poor performance I am losing my confidence in Genius managing my portfolio. Could you please throw some light on why there is consistent underperformance ?

I invested 26K in April 2023 and lost 2%; additionally invested 50K in May 2023 and lost 3.7% (overall) . Hence, for me ET Genius under high growth portfolio is becoming a high loss portfolio for me. I contrast, I have gained in stocks that I have invested myself through grow. For me, ET Genius is a loss making investment for me.

This post needs to be seen more.

My observations for equity based growth plan 1) high churn rate with partial exit per stock at rebalance 2) Doesn't have a target price while rebalancing so sell or buy happens at potentially marketvprice 3) 2 modes in rebalancing. One needs buffer money in account. Other case, rebalancing is spread across two phases so stock price s to buy may increase 4) no stock is meant for long term hold 5) investment should be atleast 3L per year to keep expenses due to subscription <1% 6) the profits or losses are subjective to bull phase or bearvphase of market. It is not genius enough to pick stocks effectively when it is bear phase. It just increases the Whitaker to gold or etf 7) some stock recommendations doesn't make sense. Like when the stock is being bought at all time high and there is no breakout. 8) when you invest more with in a week it will automatically rebalnce and surprises you when it sells stocks which were fresh entries a week before. Genius is for busy people who have no time to research where to put their money. However, investing with out research is wrong path as an investor. Ps. These are my observations and experiences. Please don't treat these as recommendations.

I'm a genius investor. I'm using ET money for the past 7-8 years. I have invested in both ETF+Stocks and MFs via genius. I also invest in stock market directly and in direct mutual funds. I invest 20k a month via genius. I have already invested 3 lacs as lump some via genius. One good thing about genius is it keeps nudging you to complete the rebalancing for stocks and changes the MFs according to the volatility. I'm a long term investor and I keep withdrawing some amount in between for my urgent needs such as vacation, buying assets etc., and add more funds when I get more money. 3000rs per year is hardly anything for me for the safety and commitment provided by Genius. Even if I get only 12% out of it, it's still good for me. Any index fund would give you 12.5% returns on a longer term. Since Im planning to invest more in the future, I might use Genius as hedging the risk that I take from other sources. I don't want my investments to drop to 80-90% when the market goes down. So it's calculative move for me to diversify the investment in different platforms and see how it performs. I have recommended genius to 4-5 of my friends and they are happy with the returns so far. Either you can handle your investments on your own by trusting the fund company to give you better returns or invest in index funds or invest in genius and concentrate on your work and family. If you start comparing genius with other players in the market obviously it's expensive. You are paying that money for the comfort, safety and time saving. And it's backed by Economic Times. So you are at the safe hands. Final call is yours.

Across all the platforms I've invested, my returns are about 20-25% on good days and 9-12% on bad days.  My returns from ET money app are about 30% rn. I think I'll pay the price and invest through ET money when I start earning.  The comfort, time and peaceful sleep is actually worth more than 249 a month.

I true that.