As a Non Resident Indian (NRI) are you are planning to invest in mutual funds? The question that you are probably asking is:
Now see, if you are a US or Canada based NRI, most of the mutual funds in India will not accept investments from you. But that is slowly changing.
Few mutual fund houses currently accept investments from US and Canada based NRIs. These are:
(This report on Sundaram Select midcap fund originally appeared on the Unovest Blog.)
Ask any seasoned investor and he would agree that the potential available with midcaps (as they grow and turn themselves bigger) could be huge. However, midcap stocks can be very volatile.
For those investors who would want the exposure to midcaps but not take the pain of looking at individual stocks, they can invest through midcap funds and make them a part of their long term portfolio.
Midcap funds would mimic the behaviour of midcap stocks as they ultimately invest in them. They can take you on a real topsy-turvy ride. Thus, it is important to select the right fund for your portfolio.
There are several midcap funds out there in the market. It sometimes becomes real difficult to pick one over the other.
Yes, performance is what you would look at but in my view one needs to go real deep – beyond just the performance numbers – and see which fund fits in his/her portfolio and financial goals.
We will make an attempt today with one of the funds.
In this report, we cover one of the oldest funds from the midcap space – Sundaram Select Midcap.
As mentioned, we will attempt to go beyond the performance and understand the fundamental nature of the fund and evaluate how well it has done with respect to its mandate – things that you should look at before making it a part of your portfolio.
Let’s get started.
I often receive reader queries on the blog stating their choices of schemes that should be a part of their winning MF portfolio. They then want to know if it is alright or any change is required.
I recently received another one. As I said this is not the only one. There have been several such in the past. So, this reader had been investing in the following funds and now wanted a ‘second opinion‘ if these funds continued to make sense.
Here is the list of fund scheme names with their options.
The reader was concerned that his portfolio had a loss, that is, the current value of the investments was less than the amount he had invested.
He also made it amply clear that he was looking for ‘maximum returns‘. He mentioned that it was his hard earned money, which to me means that he does not want to take a lot of risk.
And you know what – his retirement is only 5 years away!
This is a perfect textbook example of how one can make all the mistakes in one go. I believe we all have lessons to learn here.
How should one track mutual funds portfolio – all of it in one place? This has been a common problem expressed by many investors. Any why not?
There are 44 mutual fund companies in India along with 4 registrar and transfer agents who handle customer transactions.
If you happen to have investments in just 4 mutual funds, that is, HDFC, Quantum, Sundaram and Franklin Templeton, you are going to have an interesting time tracking all these investments with multiple folios in one single place.
Add to that investments in the name of family members and you have got a multiplication of your tracking troubles.
So, you are looking for a solution that enables you to:
If you have been bombarded recently with emails from various fund houses announcing several fixed maturity plans or FMPs, as they are popularly known, then you are not alone.
FD returns have gone down recently and fund houses are doing their best to offer an alternative to the ‘safe return’ seeking population.
If you have come across an FMP sales pitch, it almost always is that “it is as safe as a Bank FD”, yet, “it will give higher returns than an FD.” An easy lure for most investors since ‘safe returns’ is a primary criteria.
Let’s build a perspective on FMPs and should they become a part of your portfolio?
If you have invested in a Bank FD before, you know that it comes in for different tenures of 1 year, 3 year, 5 year, etc.
If you have ever read or heard a mutual fund advertisement in print or radio or TV, the final cautionary words are – “Please read the scheme information document carefully before investing.”
In reality, very few investors actually do it. That does not take away the fact that the best way to understand a fund is to read various documents associated with it.
Unfortunately, the fund industry has done its best to confuse the investor in every way possible. The information is strewn across so many documents including a Scheme Information Document (SID), a Key Information Memorandum (KIM) and a Factsheet.
And worse, there is no standard format for them. So, if you take scheme documents of two funds, you would feel that they have come from two different planets.
Just search documents for any two funds on the Internet and you will know what I mean.
As an investor, the most important information that you should be looking for is available in the fund factsheet.