Here's how to own your dream home without paying excessive interest on your EMIs.
rediffGURU Ulhas Joshi answers your personal finance and mutual fund queries
After a stellar 2023, the mutual fund industry sustained its growth momentum in 2024 with an impressive Rs 17 lakh crore surge in assets, driven by buoyant equity markets, robust economic growth, and increasing investor participation. Experts are predicting the positive trend will extend into 2025.
Multi-asset allocation funds emerged as the most popular option for MFs as they provided the needed flexibility.
The Rs 84,000 crore domestic fund of funds (FoFs) space, which was in the doldrums over the past 18 months, has now caught the attention of investors due to a change in the tax structure in Budget 2024. The broader category, which includes offerings across equity, debt and commodities, has seen a spike in the inflows over the past two months. FoFs typically deploy the pooled capital in one or multiple MF schemes rather than investing directly into equities, debt or commodities.
Largecap, flexicap, and balanced advantage funds together recorded a net inflow of Rs 9,363 crore in August, representing a 70% increase from the previous month's total.
Hybrid mutual fund (MF) offers, expected to drive higher investor interest after the change in debt fund taxation, are set to end 2023 with the slowest account growth in the past three years. Investment accounts in hybrid funds are up 5.7 per cent so far in 2023 compared with 7.6 per cent in 2022 and 20 per cent in 2021, shows the data from the Association of Mutual Funds in India (Amfi). In 2020, the count had dipped 2.4 per cent.
'By investing in a basket of funds, FoFs can help minimise the impact of underperforming funds, thus reducing overall investment risk.'
rediffGURU Ulhas Joshi answers your personal finance and mutual fund queries.
rediffGURU Ulhas Joshi answers your mutual fund queries.
Regardless of market levels, invest in stocks and equity mutual funds in a staggered manner.
rediffGURU Sunil Lala answers your personal finance-related queries.
Ulhas Joshi, Head -- Sales, Rank MF, a mutual fund investment platform, answers your queries.
'Investors should do proper analysis before putting in their money in NFOs as most new launches are in the high-risk thematic space.'
While the minimum holding period for LTCG taxation has now been lowered, the tax outgo could be a bit higher under the new structure.
rediffGURU Ulhas Joshi answers your mutual fund queries.
Net inflows into two of the 'lower risk' equity funds - largecaps and flexicaps - outpaced the flows into smallcap funds during January 2024 for the first time in 17 months. This is an indication that investors may now be shifting to the relatively safer largecap stocks after a sharp run up in the mid and smallcap spaces. Net inflows into large and flexicap funds were at Rs 3,730 crore last month against Rs 3,260 crore by smallcap schemes.
Fund houses are exploring ways to differentiate themselves in the hybrid space. A relatively unknown hybrid fund variant, Balanced Hybrid, is about to see its first launch since the introduction of mutual fund (MF) scheme categorisation norms in 2017. WhiteOak Capital MF has filed papers with the regulator for this scheme, which comes amid increasing interest in the hybrid space. MFs anticipate that hybrids will become the preferred category for investors with a lower risk appetite following changes in debt fund taxation.
Riding the wave of the equity market, the mutual fund (MF) industry experienced double-digit growth in Samvat 2079, concluding the Hindu calendar year close to the Rs 50 trillion assets under management milestone. After a subdued 6 per cent growth in Samvat 2078, the industry's assets surged over 18 per cent last year to Rs 46.7 trillion. Industry players anticipate that Samvat 2080 will also be a fruitful year for the asset management industry, given the strong inflows from retail investors, particularly through the systematic investment plan route.
Now that bank FD rates have gone up and most BAFs haven't delivered good returns, these investors are likely to be moving back to FDs, observed a senior MF distributor. The performance of BAFs in the past year has been mixed.
rediffGURU Ulhas Joshi answers readers' mutual fund queries
The mutual fund (MF) industry had an action-packed 2023 as it tackled the scrapping of tax benefits for debt fund investors and surging flows into equity funds.
Begin the year-end review by assessing whether your portfolios are on track to achieve your life goals.
Ask rediffGURU Ulhas Joshi your mutual fund queries.
'Midcap and smallcap indices are trading in the expensive zone.'
The net inflows into active equity mutual fund (MF) schemes registered more than a twofold month-on-month rise in August, crossing Rs 20,000 crore, the highest in five months. This rise in net inflows was boosted by an 18 per cent growth in gross investments, driven by a record Rs 15,800 crore inflow through the systematic investment plan (SIP) route and Rs 5,000 crore collected by seven new fund offers (NFOs) in the active equity space, reveals data released by the Association of Mutual Funds in India (Amfi). Moreover, redemptions moderated in August, declining by 19 per cent to Rs 24,580 crore, after staying elevated in the previous three months owing to profit booking.
Mutual funds focused on small-caps have emerged as the winner with a net inflow of close to Rs 11,000 crore in April-June quarter, as fund managers struggle to create alpha in the large-cap space, and the trend is expected to continue for some time. On the other hand, large-cap space, which is yet to pick up momentum, witnessed an outflow of Rs 3,360 crore during the quarter under review, data from the Association of Mutual Funds in India (Amfi) showed. Apart from the June quarter, small-cap funds logged an inflow of Rs 6,932 crore in three months that ended in March.
If a 5% to 10% fall in the equity market gives you sleepless nights, you are not cut out for a 75% to 80% allocation to equities and must reduce it.
rediffGURU Dev Ashish answers your personal finance and mutual fund queries.
'In 2022, active management, long-short strategies, multi-asset strategies, and asset allocation strategies need to be considered to meet long-term investment goals.'
'As the Indian economy continues to expand over the next three years, mid- and small-caps should do well as they have higher exposure to the domestic economy than large-caps.'
Omkeshwar Singh, Head, Rank MF, a mutual fund investment platform, answers your queries.
'Very few of small investors stay invested for those three or four or five years.' 'If there's like a six month, one-year period when market is not doing well, you exit.' 'After the market has run up, you get in again.' 'This way you will never make returns.'
Omkeshwar Singh, Head, Rank MF, a mutual fund investment platform, answers your queries.
Ulhas Joshi, Head -- Sales, Rank MF, a mutual fund investment platform, answers your queries.
Omkeshwar Singh, Head, Rank MF, a mutual fund investment platform, answers your mutual fund queries.
Omkeshwar Singh, Head, Rank MF, a mutual fund investment platform, answers your queries.
On February 24, when Vladimir Putin announced a military operation on Ukraine, few would have thought that Indian government-owned GAIL India would feel the impact. The tensions over gas supplies were essentially a Europe-Russia problem, related to the sanctions western economies imposed on Moscow. But the EU depends on Russian imports for 40 per cent of its gas stocks, an over-dependence that Russia has underlined with Kremlin-owned Gazprom cutting its supplies through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline to 20 per cent, citing maintenance issues.
Omkeshwar Singh, Head, Rank MF, a mutual fund investment platform, answers your queries.
Omkeshwar Singh, head, Rank MF, a mutual fund investment platform, answers your queries.
