A mutual fund is a professionally managed type of collective investment scheme that pools money from many investors and invests it in stocks, bonds, short-term money market instruments, and/or other securities.
Funds are selected on quantitative parameters such as volatility, risk adjusted returns, rolling return coupled with a qualitative analysis of fund performance and investment styles through regular due diligence processes.
Mutual funds are popular because they offer the ability to easily invest in increasingly more complicated financial markets. A large part of the success of mutual funds is also the advantages they offer in terms of diversification, professional management and liquidity.
Advantages of Investing into a Mutual Fund
Flexibility: Mutual Fund investments offer lot of flexibility with features such as systematic investment plans, systematic withdrawal plans, and dividend reinvestment.
Affordability: They are available in units which make it very affordable. Because of the large corpus, even a small investor can benefit from its investment strategy.
Liquidity: In open-ended schemes, you have the option of withdrawing or redeeming your money at any point of time at the current NAV.
Diversification: Risk is lowered with Mutual Funds as they invest across different industries & stocks.
Disciplined investing: Facilities like SIP (Systematic Investment Plan) inculcate a habit of regular saving and investing by making you invest a fixed amount periodically for a pre determined period of time in a mutual fund scheme.
Professional Management: Expert Fund Managers of the Mutual Fund analyze all options based on experience & research.
Potential of return: The fund managers who take care of your Mutual Fund have access to information and statistics from leading economists and analysts around the world. Because of this, they are in a better position than individual investors to identify opportunities for your investments to flourish.
Low Costs: The benefits of scale in brokerage, custodial and other fees translate into lower costs for investors.
Transparent and well-regulated: The mutual fund industry is regulated by Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) and is governed by SEBI mutual fund regulations. These regulations ensure transparency in the functioning of mutual fund.
