“My goal is long-term. If my risk appetite is moderate, what kind of mutual funds should I choose?”. This is a common question asked in personal finance forums. We discuss what investors in this situation should do.

Let us consider this question asked by a reader: “Instead of starting a mutual fund SIP, can I invest small amounts on my own each month?” The answer might seem trivial to old investors, but it worth clarifying for the sake of newbies.

Investing in mutual funds is only a choice and has nothing to do with “financial literacy”. Imagine yourself as a financial advisor with no conflict of interest – meaning you are neither a sales guy nor looking to profit from a percentage of a clients networth. A client comes to you and says, “I want…

A multi-asset mutual fund is a new fund category introduced by SEBI. It has the mandate to invest at least 10% each in equity, debt and gold or permitted commodities at all times. We discuss the nature of available multi-asset funds, when investors should consider them and what to expect. We also consider if these…

A “long-term”  SIP can teach us many things about risk and reward. These are the lessons learned from an Rs. 500 a month SIP running since Aug 2009 in Sundaram Midcap Fund for a relative. Some tend to dismiss our earlier analysis on “SIP risk” as “theoretical”. So here are inferences with “real money”!

While the Public provident fund offers risk-free, gradually varying returns, a govt bond provides risk-free, constant income. If we buy it via a gilt mutual fund then its daily value depends on market supply and demand. The risk, although lower than equity or gold is still significantly high. There are some advantages of using gilt…

In this 15-year equity mutual fund SIP report, we tabulate returns for 148 equity-oriented mutual funds to find only 71 managed a return greater than 10%, and out of these 71, 17 are sectoral/thematic funds.

There is an uncanny pattern to mistakes mutual fund investors make regardless of their experience. Here are five such common mistakes. Avoiding these can significantly help your portfolio.

This is a list of factor-based ETFs and index funds, also known as smart beta funds or strategic funds, available in India as of July 2020

Those who argue that the stock market recovery is not to be trusted can use the Nifty 50 Arbitrage Index for support. The index that tracks the price difference between “buying equities and selling equivalent equity futures” has registered a fall over the last three months (13 weeks to be exact). Pointing to a drying…

Here are four ELSS funds that have consistently outperformed the NIfty 200 Total Return Index (dividends included) in terms of both returns and risk.

A factor-based index is one in which parameters like volatility, momentum, alpha, ROE, PB, PE etc are used to construct the index instead of market capitalization. This is one way to reduce concentration risk in traditional indices like Nifty and Sensex. Midcap mutual funds have struggled to beat the NIFTY Midcap150 Quality 50 Index.

“I checked the monthly fact sheet of my equity mutual fund and found that the equity allocation was less than 65% of domestic equity shares. Does this it will be classified as a debt mutual fund and I have to pay more tax on it?”.  A discussion.