One of the most common investor mistakes is to assume that higher the equity in the portfolio, higher the reward. Studying balanced mutual funds or aggressive hybrid mutual fund will tell you that this is wrong. In this article, I compare the risk vs return of Aggressive Hybrid Mutual Funds vs diversified mutual funds & show…

This is a simple, non-technical description of what are mutual fund star ratings and how they are calculated with the help of an analogy – employee performance appraisal. This is meant for beginners and newbies and I have avoided all jargon. It is only when we understand how star ratings are calculated, can we understand their…

The fall in the markets over the last few weeks gives us a small window of opportunity to learn about risk in mutual funds. In this post, I list the funds and fund categories that fell the most and those that fell the least between Aug 28th 2018 and October 14th 2018. Although this is…

So all it took was just a few days of southbound market movement for questions like, “Should I Stop My Mutual Fund SIPs? Market is falling every day!” to start! Yesterday, I saw five such questions in Quora and readers have sent me similar emails. So if you are asking this question, here is why…

One of the common newbie questions regarding mutual fund SIPs is: What is the best date to start a mutual fund SIP? Nothing wrong with the question, but as in most cases, the answers are often wrong. In this post, I discuss the data of 4147 10-year Sensex SIP retuns computed between Jan 1991 and Sep…

If you are looking for someone to advise you on money management, then you should sign up with a fee-only financial planner – an investment advisor registered with SEBI – who does not get commissions from any agency and works only for you. Hundreds of readers have engaged the advisors from the freefincal List of Fee-only Financial…

Here are 10 things mutual fund investors should not be doing! Avoiding these will make you a better and contented investor. Naturally, the following is an opinion formed from my experience (and nature) and naturally, I do not expect many of you agree with me. The serenity prayer made popular by AA groups goes like…

Change in any sphere of life is inevitable. In the last decade or so, change has been so rapid in the Indian financial industry space – especially that concerning mutual funds and investment advise – that it is scary to watch even from the sidelines. A couple of years ago, PV Subra(money.com) asked a gathering…

Using the August 2018 Equity Mutual Fund Performance Screener published yesterday, we find out how large-cap and value-oriented mutual funds have fared against the Nifty 100 Equal Weight Index. This index has equal exposure to the top 100 stocks by free-float market capitalization. Sundaram and Principal AMC have index funds based on this. So like the Nifty…

Here is a list of equity mutual funds with low risk and good returns. There are 53 such funds across ten fund categories. How and why I compiled this list: Parag Parikh Long-Term Equity Fund (PPLTE) turned five last May (I am an NFO investor). So I wanted to review this funds performance for a post…

Skin in the game refers to a situation where the major decision makers (in any field) have a personal stake in the decisions that they make. In finance, one example is a fund manager and/or fund management (the fund house) investing their own money in the funds that they manage. I argue that demanding such a…

Readers may be well aware that I am no fan of mutual fund star ratings. Star ratings and past performance if not understood with the right perspective can result in mistakes. In this post, let me give you an example – of my laziness that lead to a mistake in the July 2018 Equity Mutual Fund…

A few days ago, I had presented backtest results for investing a lump sum in one-shot into an equity mutual fund vs gradually. I had shown that those looking to reduce investment risk or looking for better returns via gradual investing will be disappointed as there was no clear trend as to which is better….

If you have a lump sum and would like to invest it in an equity mutual fund, what is the best way to go about it? Invest in one-shot or gradually over a few months? Is there any benefit in investing gradually other than psychological comfort? Let us find out with a backtest. Before we…

In the third part of the video series on MF FAQ, we consider the following questions: 1:  Do we even need mutual funds?; Why should we invest in mutual funds? What are the benefits? 2: What is so special about a debt mutual fund? 3:  What are the risks associated with a debt mutual fund?  4: How to select…