Economic Times give confusing tips on investment

I have to put a disclaimer before I state anything. My knowledge on stocks and investments could not be called anything but rudimentary. Any investments I did in equity market, I did it based on advice given by my father.

That said, I have started to look at the market recently. And from my understanding, the basics of investment is something along the following lines. When you can take risk, which is usually at earlier part of your life, your investment portfolio should be more in equity and less in debt market. Equity market has a higher risk, but does give you a higher returns. Debt market on the other hand, is less in risk and in returns. The basic premise behind this is that, at a younger age you have time to recover from any losses the risk of investing in equity, than the time you have at later part of your life.

But there cannot be a preset ratio or correlation of the ratio to your age. There are other factors that you need to take into account. There might be some responsibilities, or some loans that you need to repay. The market conditions too need to be taken into account. There is no point investing into equity when you cannot get a return, just because you are young.

That brings me to hunting and searching (googling, or should I say binging?) for current news, tips, and articles on investment strategies. Since I did take advice from my father, and that has acutally helped me build assets, I thought I would do what he did. As a kid, I remember him reading through several newspapers and related magazine, one among them being Economic Times.

I do not buy newspapers. I am not sure how that will effect the newspaper industry in India. I turned to the online version. And that led me to these two articles.

• Stock market faced strong sell-off last week by Deepak Mohoni
• Increase your exposure to debt funds by Pallavi Mulay

These are two articles published on the same day, by the same news outlet. One says the debt market is strong, while the other advices to invest in equity market.

What am I, a newbie investor, to make of this?