• Speculation in normal terms mean “Thinking”. Financial instruments keep getting different prices at different times. When a person thinks about these movements and takes a position either to buy or to sell at a particular price at a particular time, that decision is called speculation.
• Mostly these instruments are held for a short term period.
• Short term or long term these investors take big risk here, they provide at times 5X margin money to trade for X amount.
• Products like Derivatives, F&O and Swaps are examples of speculative products.

• This refers to financial products which require huge amounts to be invested.
• Since the capital invested is huge, generally there is a myth that they yield a very high ROI (30%+).
• The products which appear at this stage of the pyramid are: Real Estate, Venture Capital investments, Big Solitaire diamonds, Highly priced art and antique pieces.

• This refers to financial products that carry an element of risk on the capital invested with a hope of getting more yield on the money invested.
• Solution to inflation and by and large expected to yield more returns.
• At the risk of diminishing or even completely consumed in volatile times.
• These instruments are meant to give adequate amount to meet big expenses and commitments as a reward for the risk taken.
• By and large a long-term holding of these assets reduce the risk involved as they perform in some cycles and during an upward cycle they give good returns.
• The products that will appear at this stage of the pyramid are: MFs, ULIPs, Equities, Metals, Currencies and Commodities.

• This refers to the safety of the money saved for future. These products serve to provide holding capacity during turbulent times. These products are also meant to be en-cashed at a short notice.
• The products that will appear at this stage of the pyramid are: Bank term deposits, Postoffice Savings schemes, PPF, Government Bills and Bonds and Life insurance Endowment type of policies which offer a savings element along with protection.

• This refers to the financial products that offer protection of income.
• These products protect our earning capacity.
• The products that will appear at this stage of the pyramid are: Life Insurance, Critical Illness Insurance and Disability Insurance.

Why LIC? Everything and Everyone should have a financial hedge and that is Insurance. Life Insurance is a financial hedge of a human life value.

Life Insurance Corporation has about 52 years of a dedicated service, It is a part of millions of people lives and follow the process called TRUST. Today LIC functions with 2048 fully computerized branch offices, 109 divisional offices, 8 zonal offices, 992 satallite offices and the Corporate office. LIC’s Wide Area Network covers 109 divisional offices and connects all the branches through a Metro Area Network.

Mission of LIC: "Explore and enhance the quality of life of people through financial security by providing products and services of aspired attributes with competitive returns, and by rendering resources for economic development."

Vision of LIC: "A trans-nationally competitive financial conglomerate of significance to societies and Pride of India."

As a sole reinsurer in the domestic reinsurance market, GIC provides reinsurance to the direct general insurance companies in the Indian market. It is a non-life Insurance business. GIC receives statutory cession of 10% on each and every policy subject to certain limits. It leads many of domestic companies’ treaty programmers and facultative placements.

A mutual fund is just the connecting bridge or a financial intermediary that allows a group of investors to pool their money together with a predetermined investment objective. The mutual fund will have a fund manager who is responsible for investing the gathered money into specific securities (stocks or bonds). When you invest in a mutual fund, you are buying units or portions of the mutual fund and thus on investing becomes a shareholder or unit holder of the fund.

Mutual funds are considered as one of the best available investments as compare to others they are very cost efficient and also easy to invest in, thus by pooling money together in a mutual fund, investors can purchase stocks or bonds with much lower trading costs than if they tried to do it on their own. But the biggest advantage to mutual funds is diversification, by minimizing risk & maximizing returns.

Wide variety of Mutual Fund Schemes exists to cater to the needs such as financial position, risk tolerance and return expectations etc. thus mutual funds has Variety of flavors, Being a collection of many stocks, an investors can go for picking a mutual fund might be easy. There are over hundreds of mutual funds scheme to choose from.