Articles

<p dir="ltr"><span>Today I commented on a tweet about what is &ldquo;capable&rdquo; in reaction to &ldquo;People become DIY not because they are capable, but they want to avoid fees &ldquo;. That triggered me, not to sound disrespecting to anyone but really how do you define capable &ndash; is it a professional qualification like Certified Financial Planner (CFP), it is number of clients you serve or impeccable trust you have in someone.</span></p>

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.

<h2 style="font-size:21px;">What are debt mutual funds?</h2>

<p>Debt funds&nbsp;are a type of mutual fund schemes that invest predominantly in debt securities. Since a significant proportion of debt securities issued in India are fixed interest-bearing securities, such funds tend to provide stable and reasonable returns. However, the valuation of the debt securities may also fluctuate due to the changes in market interest rates and credit profile of the issuer entity.</p>

<p dir="ltr"><span>Financial planning is about preparing a roadmap for effective achievement of the financial goals in the desired time frame, after considering the available resources and investible surplus.

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 

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

When it comes to investing in equity markets, investors tend to prefer investing through mutual funds. Investors can invest in a wide range of mutual fund schemes, suiting their investment horizon, and risk appetite. One such investment option is the Exchange Traded Funds which is populary know as ETFs. Equity ETFs tracks an underlying equity index and the main difference between traditional mutual fund schemes and ETF is, ETFs can be traded on the stock exchange. 

Behavioural finance is a branch of behavioural economics, which proposes that various psychological biases influence the behaviour of people towards their financial and investment decisions. People tend to behave differently to even similar news and events, and thus, behavioural investing takes into cognizance the influence of biases in the investment decisions.