Beginner

A Corporate Bond Fund is an open-ended debt scheme predominantly investing in AA+ and above rated corporate bonds. These funds are mandated by SEBI to invest a minimum of 80% of total assets in AA+ and above rated corporate bonds. To further clarify, corporate Bonds are one of the predominant sources of funds for the companies willing to borrow from the market, apart from the borrowings from banks and financial institutions.

What is an ETF?

ETF stands for Exchange Traded Fund. As the name suggests, ETFs can be traded on stock exchanges, just like other stocks listed on stock exchanges.

As per the SEBI Guidelines, ETFs must invest at least 95% of their net assets in the underlying index's securities. Thus, ETFs adopt passive investment strategies tracking different indices, viz., equity, debt, or commodities.

NAV stands for Net Asset Value, which serves as the base and the transaction price for all the investment transactions, including purchase, redemption, switch transactions in a mutual fund scheme. For example, if NAV of mutual fund scheme is Rs. 10 and the investors have invested Rs. 5,000, 500 units will be allotted to the investor.

March 2020 was one of the worst months for equity market. Indian indices witnessed massive sell-off in line with global equities sparked by the COVID-19 pandemic and potential economic damage amid lock-down worldwide. Large cap based index, Nifty 50 dropped by over 23% and broad-based index, Nifty 500 fell by a little over 24%. Mid cap and Small cap benchmarks vis., Nifty Midcap 100 index fell over 30% and Nifty Smallcap 100 index dropped by over 36%.

e-NACH has been a recent entrant into the mutual fund investment process, in a bid to make the entire investment process digital and paperless. This article aims to discuss the NACH mandate and the registration process in detail.

National Pension Scheme (NPS) was launched by the Government of India to create a social security mechanism for all Indians. NPS seeks to fill the gap with regards to creating a retirement corpus, wherein the subscribers cannot generally withdraw before retirement. Further, a part of the accumulated corpus at the time of the retirement must be mandatorily invested to buy an annuity to ensure regular income post-retirement.

ELSS (Equity Linked Savings Scheme) funds are among the most popular mutual categories amongst the retail investors for investing in open-ended equity funds, as reflected by the number of investor folios. As of 30th June 2020, ELSS funds are present in 1.24 crore investor folios out the total 6.73 crore investor folios in equity-oriented schemes. The aggregate Assets Under Management (AUM) of Rs. 90,024 crores are in the ELSS category funds.  Source: Association of Mutual Funds in India – AMFI 

Back in my school days I used to mug up reams and reams of chemical formulas, not knowing if I would ever use them in the future. In the investing world those esoteric formulas, now seem rather meaningless. However, one concept that is still stuck in my head is that of an Isotope which I likely encountered in Class IX or X. The concept of ‘elements’ is the very foundation of Chemistry. An Isotope of an element is a similar atom with same number of protons but different neutrons.

Mutual funds have emerged as a preferred investment option among retail investors due to the benefits of professional fund management and ease of investing. As a new investor, many people have this question in mind - how do mutual funds work? What do Asset Management Companies (AMCs) do with the small investments that individuals provide?

Systematic Investment Plans (SIPs) are increasingly becoming the preferred route for investing in mutual funds, as is evident from the consistent SIP inflows. Indian Mutual Funds currently have about 5.93 crore (59.3 million) SIP accounts through which investors regularly invest in Indian Mutual Fund schemes.
Source: Association of Mutual Funds in India – AMFI