Mutual fund investment first time

Hi,

I know this forum is dedicated for discussing companies but please pardon me as I have always invested in stocks and have no experience with mutual fund. I am planning to give some allocation to MF hence need help. I do not want to go thru broker and want to invest directly. Can someone please help me with below queries

  1. What is procedure to opt for mutual fund directly. Can I do it online or customer care?
  2. I have no idea at all of any mutual fund. What is the procedure for selecting any fund?
  3. Which are good funds which I should start with IDFC, ICICI, HDFC, Birla?

@sunilsurana Please find the answers

  1. You can go to respective Mutual Funds website and buy those MFs. Most of the MFs are having an option to buy directly e.g. https://investeasy.reliancemutual.com/loginonline/
  2. There are may sites like Monecontrol which can provide you research on MFs. http://www.moneycontrol.com/mutualfundindia/
    You can select the funds based on the Risk you can take like Equity Diversified, Balanced, Debt
  3. You can do your own research

@sunilsurana

  • All Mutual funds have option of buying directly. You have to visit respective mutual fund website
  • for investing more than Rs 50 K you need to have complied with KYC ( Know your customer ). It’s one time process. Since you are already investing in stocks, you might be having PAN.
  • Valueresearchonline and Morningstar.in worth visiting to understand about MF
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@sunilsurana Alternatively, you can DIY analysis on mutual fund by learning it through http://freefincal.com/
Hope this helps

Any recommendations for mf? IDFC premier equity was good but now kenneth left. Also parag died so ppfas is probably not good. i have to pull money out from them and not sure what to do. is motilal oswal good?

@kmukul mutual funds are not one man army. Moreover read the views of Rajeev Thakkar and his philosophy and then decide if ppfas is probably not good. Yes the man at the top matters but the organisation follows a process and usually that is ingrained by the person at the top.

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Well i am no pundit but the above said funds definitely did well . Future is unpredictable, i guess you should give some time to both the funds to see how they perform in next 2-3 years and then decide.

My 2c.

Even if you have a “regular” plan, you can switch to the “direct” plan. If your holding in any fund is more than 2L, I suggest switching to the direct plan. You will save approx Rs 1000 a year for just a tick mark on a form. :smile:

I also agree that PPFAS is still a good fund. Am holding it since inception. The fund has a process and it is still being followed. Besides, it is one of the only diversified funds that can invest in foreign stocks (up to 30%) and it does.

And finally, picking a mutual fund is one of the most difficult tasks. :slight_smile: It is like Mr Buffet’s rear-view driving. You buy based on history but the history is created by the stocks chosen by A fund manager. Now in the future, both the stocks and the fund manager can change (see IDFC where Mr Andrade just quit). So all you can do is hope that things go off well in the future. When you buy a stock, then it remains the same and the management (especially promoters) rarely change.

One thing I have learned is to look at the AUM. It is generally believed that very large AUMs can be a drag on performance. This hasn’t been proven 100% of the time but realistically, the fund has less wiggle room as the AUM grows.

All the best.

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With due respect to the comments, i dont want to hold funds in which fund manager has changed, thats too much risk. is there another fund with a good fund manager as a replacement. I am not in a hurry but i want to be out sooner then later

A few points to consider while shortlisting Mutual Funds. Value Research Online provides a wealth of information on MFs.

  1. Expense Ratio of the fund (Direct Plans are ofcourse cheaper)
  2. Portfolio churn ratio of the fun
  3. Category of Fund to invest in (Standard ones include Micro/Small Cap, Mid Cap, Large & Midcap, Large Cap, Balanced, ELSS, Thematic (e.g. Pharma, FMCG etc), Debt Funds
  4. Underlying portfolio companies the fund has invested in
  5. If it is an old fund then maybe a 10 Year performance comparison and the longevity of the Fund Manager

If you want to manage funds from multiple Houses under a single window then Funds India and Fundsupermart offer the same, albeit only as a regular fund option. (in addition to standard brokerages like ICICI Direct)

Cheers,
Pulak

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