Business Time

                                     MUTUAL FUND INVESTMENTS

                                               Ms. Sonali Gopal Kale, Sr. Lecturer, Finance (MMS)

                                               Yadavrao Tasgaonkar School Of Business Management,

                                                Chandai, Bhiwpuri Rd.

 

The Mutual fund industry is growing at a tremendous pace. A large number of plans have come up from different financial resources. With the Stock markets soaring the investors are attracted towards these schemes.

Only a small segment of the investors still invest in Mutual funds and the main sources of information still are the financial advisors followed by advertisements in different media. The Indian investor generally investors over a period of 2 to three years. Also there is a greater tendency to invest in fixed deposits due to the security attached with it.

In order to excel and make mutual funds a success, companies still need to create awareness and understand the Psyche of the Indian customer. There is lack of awareness among people about mutual funds so there should be more advertising and other promotional campaigns to make them aware. People are more interested in investing in equity funds rather than debt funds because companies are promoting more for equity funds. Companies should equally promote debt funds also as the provide security to customers. Companies should give knowledge to its customer about its computerized operations to save their time and to make the operations easier.

MEANING OF MUTUAL FUNDS:-

A mutual fund is a professionally managed firm of collective investments that collects money from many investors and puts it in stocks, bonds, short-term money market instruments, and/or other securities. The fund manager, also known as portfolio manager, invests and trades the fund’s underlying securities, realizing capital gains or losses and passing any proceeds to the individual investors.  Mutual Fund is a investment company that pools money from shareholders and invests in a variety of securities, such as stocks, bonds and money market instruments. Most open-end mutual funds stand ready to buy back (redeem) its shares at their current net asset value, which depends on the total market value of the fund’s investment portfolio at the time of redemption. Most open-end mutual funds continuously offer new shares to investors.

Also known as an open-end investment company, to differentiate it from a closed-end investment company. Mutual funds invest pooled cash of many investors to meet the fund’s stated investment objective. Mutual funds stand ready to sell and redeem their shares at any time at the fund’s current net asset value: total fund assets divided by shares outstanding.

            In Simple Words, Mutual fund is a mechanism for pooling the resources by issuing units to the investors and investing funds in securities in accordance with objectives as disclosed in offer document.

Investments in securities are spread across a wide cross-section of industries and sectors and thus the risk is reduced. Diversification reduces the risk because all stocks may not move in the same direction in the same proportion at the same time. Mutual fund issues units to the investors in accordance with quantum of money invested by them. Investors of mutual funds are known as unit holders.

The profits or losses are shared by the investors in proportion to their investments. The mutual funds normally come out with a number of schemes with different investment objectives which are launched from time to time. In India, A mutual fund is required to be registered with Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) which regulates securities markets before it can collect funds from the public.