Apple surpasses Microsoft's market capitalization

Apple surpassed Microsoft's market cap last week. Microsoft 's revolutionary windows and its user friendly user tools took the world by storm and made computing reach the masses. Bill Gates and Microsoft were the innovation icons in the last decade of 20th century.

Apple which was literally bailed out by Microsoft in the last decade has bounced back because of it's innovation. iphone, itouch and ipad are to a great extent shaping the future of computing tomorrow.

Innovation and making the innovation reach the masses makes great companies. Innovative computing , wireless data connection and cloud computing are the mantras of today which have got companies like Apple and Google to the fore.

Most of these companies have a R&D centre in India and hope a few of the next generation innovations comes from India or from Indian companies themselves which are now more dominant in the IT services sector. Hope some day we will have a company from India doing the same feat that Google and Apple are doing today.

April - It's time to plan for your taxes

For the salaried class, this is the right time to start planning our taxes for financial year 2010-11

1. Plan your investments under 80c and for infrastructure bonds.

2. Decide on the declarations that you need to make to your employers and do that diligently.

3. Start making investments on a systematic basis and do not wait for Jan-Mar 2011 period.

http://ideasmoney.blogspot.com/2007/12/advantage-of-planning-for-tax.html

Highest NAV guarantee

Highest NAV guarantee is the new ad banner under which ULIP policies are being sold these days.

The following article is a must read before you decide to invest in such schemes.

http://new.valueresearchonline.com/story/h2_storyview.asp?str=101309

Make a sound investment decision based on your knowledge of the product and not based on advertisement alone.

Budget 2010 India - Changes that would benefit individual tax payers

Following are the changes that would benefit the salaried class/ individual tax payers.


Direct Taxes


Income tax slabs for individual taxpayers to be as follows
Income upto Rs 1.6 lakh Nil
Income above Rs 1.6 lakh and upto Rs. 5 lakh 10 per cent
Income above Rs.5 lakh and upto Rs. 8 lakh 20 per cent
Income above Rs. 8 lakh 30 per cent


Deduction of an additional amount of Rs. 20,000 allowed, over and above the existing limit of Rs.1 lakh on tax savings, for investment in long-term infrastructure bonds as notified by the Central Government


Besides contributions to health insurance schemes which is currently allowed as a deduction under the Income-tax Act, contributions to the Central Government Health Scheme also allowed as a deduction under the same provision

Spark Lines on NSE website

Just got a glimpse of sparklines in the NSE website.

http://nseindia.com/content/equities/niftysparks.htm

This page would help investors/traders to have a quick glimpse of the index stocks and this is available for most of the key NIFTY indices (like Junior Nifty, CNX IT, Bank Nifty, Nifty Midcap 50).

Crisp graphical representation of price movement, details of price changes and color coding of stocks nearing 52 week high /low & much more are presented in a crisp and adorable manner.

You can have a look at it when free.! I find this new page exciting!