|
Billionaire |
|
Mutual Funds — A vehicle for smooth ride to wealth accumulation — Part-1 • A professional approach to investment By K. V. Ramaswamy & Vijay S. Choksi |
|
Everyone of us wants to make money and save it for different purposes. The most effective emotional objective – funding for children’s education is going to be as expensive as in the western countries. Some of us are already feeling the pinch. A brief analysis of the situation is depicted here for ready reference. The requirements of other parts of the life cycle would be equally demanding. The only inference to be drawn here is, even by sacrificing a part of our current consumption, we must start saving and properly investing right from the early earning age. Talking of mutual funds, we all know the mutual funds primarily for the equity related investment avenues. Mutual funds are fast becoming part of our life for investment purposes. The mutual fund industry has been growing at a phenomenal pace and is becoming more and more popular as an investment vehicle, on its own merits and partly due to the circumstances. There has to be a good logical reason for the same. The investment in mutual funds is an integral part of financial planning, not on an ad hoc percentage, but determined on consideration of various relevant factors. There is much more to know about the mutual funds, the avenues they offer, the convenience and flexibility of process, advantages of investing in funds, precautions to be taken, etc. Hence, it is all the more important that before embarking on the investment, we try to learn more about them and thereby properly exploit the opportunity they offer. If pursued with discipline from young age, the investment thru mutual funds (owing to the flexibility they offer and the competence the fund managers have developed) do certainly offer a way to wealth – becoming billionaire in a more simplistic way and with relatively less risk. Our earnest attempt is to share the experience in a more general way for the benefit of all, especially those professional colleagues who due to their preoccupation in their work, have not been able to explore the depth of this subject. In wealth creation exercise, the first mandatory pre-requisite is to impose a good saving habit on ourselves. Whatever be the income, at least some part has to be saved, even a very small marginal amount has to be saved in extreme conditions. The next step is the proper investment of the saving. When we use the term ‘saving’, we mean that part of the unspent income which we will not require for some period of time may be short-term or may be very long-term. We should consciously attempt to quantify both these kinds of savings in line with our requirements. Some part of saving may be short-term say one month to three months – paying various kinds of taxes or suppliers or little longer for building inventories. This is purely short-term liquidity parking. It is for the business or household requirements, where the safety of the principal and flexibility of the duration are of absolute primary importance. The concept is to try to get a little better yield without compromising the safety of the principal and ready availability of the funds at the shortest possible notice. It is also a part of ‘treasury function’ in the corporate set up. For our discussion here, we call it ‘short-term liquidity’. There may also be some cases of temporary liquidity in personal hands and also in business, for meeting some commitments say payment for housing, repayment of loan, etc. This is also a kind of short-term liquidity, which may be gainfully parked in a suitable scheme of a mutual fund. The other part of the saving may be for long-term. We do not envisage in normal course the need for use of this portion of savings. We may need it after some time or for some intended purpose such as funding for housing, vehicles, education, retirement, foreign tour, etc in case of non business savings. In case of business savings, it may be for expansion, emergency requirement, normal capital expenditure, retirement benefits to employees, replacement of some assets, etc. It is imperative to understand that the short-term liquidity should never be invested in long-term investment avenues such as equity funds or debt funds other than liquid or short-term income funds. The short-term liquidity should necessarily be parked in short-term investment avenues such as liquid funds, floating short-term funds or short-term income funds, depending upon the short-term interest rate scenario. At the same time the long-term liquidity should not find way to short-term investments (except for temporary parking on way to equity or other long-term investments), else it will obviously underperform. It will not provide hedge against inflation or rising cost of living. It is a well recognized opinion that in long-term, equities outperform all other asset classes. Hence, a part of the long-term liquidity deserves to be invested in equities as per the risk profile and other relevant circumstances of the investor. There are various simple and complex ways to invest the savings. Some
investments are very simple, such as parking in bank fixed deposits with
pre-determined rate of interest and its term. The simplicity or notional safety
per se does not add desired value. We have to consider the cost benefit to
select the investment vehicle. It is not a simple and short explanation, but not a complicated one either. For the purpose of this discussion, we prefer to restrict ourselves mainly to the commercial part. Majority of us today look at mutual fund only for the equity related investment. The mutual funds today offer a host of other investment avenues both for short-term and long-term and in various asset classes, to suit to different categories of investors and different kinds of requirements. Another fact to note, today, the mutual fund industry is well regulated and has come of age, comparing well with its peers in developed markets. It is known for its innovative approach and quickness in responding to the circumstances. The spectrum is always broadening, with newer products, often tailor made for certain specific situations. We take a brief look at the basic concepts pertaining to that industry. In mutual fund parlance, the products are called schemes or funds. The schemes are broadly of two categories:
In each category there are various sub-categories and so on, each with some specific objective to suit to the requirements of some particular class of investors :
In dividend option especially in case of debt schemes, there are sub-options of periodicity/ frequency, such as
* more relevant for institutions and banks investing huge amounts on ultra short-term basis in liquid and other debt funds. May not be convenient for others.
A conservative /retired investor may opt for dividend payout option. The logic for this selection may be:
Under the present tax structure for the equity oriented schemes, the long-term investor may not bother about the dividend income and may gainfully opt for Growth option. For the equity oriented schemes the long-term investment (over 365 days) is totally tax exempt for the investors other than corporates (for corporates there is some incidence of tax). Hence, the investor aims for the benefit of better appreciation in rising market and also reduced accounting and paper work. The Investors are generally classified into two categories by the funds –
This is based on the amount invested. As specified in the offer document of a particular scheme, an investment beyond a certain sum say Rs. one crore and above or Rs. five crore and above may be classified as Institutional, if so selected by the investor. The default class is Retail. SIP/STP Processes Another significant aspect leading to increasing popularity of mutual fund investments is the further convenience and flexibility it offers. Most funds offer SIP and STP for convenience of both small and big investors. SIP stands for ‘Systematic Investment Plan’, which is similar in operation to a recurring deposit in a bank. It refers to investments made with specific regularity of time interval, agreed in advance with the fund. Investment as usual can be made one time or at various intervals regular or otherwise, at the discretion of the investor, depending upon liquidity and flow of income. The investor has the choice of mode / process of investment. He may invest his entire investible surplus at a time or he may invest it in parts. (this goes for both equity as well debt schemes). If he desires to act safe, play conservative against the volatility in the market (equity market), he may not invest the entire amount at a time, but spread the investment in various instalments. To simplify the process, especially for the small investors in salaried class, the mutual fund industry has made SIP process still more attractive by reducing the minimum amount. An investor under this process agrees to invest a pre-determined sum every month on a particular date in a particular scheme for a pre-determined period. To put it simply, the investor may decide to invest every month a small sum even Rs. 500 in a particular scheme for a period generally one year and more. For this, he does not need to issue cheque and deposit every month. The process may become laborious for anyone and would not be adhered to with discipline in long-term. The funds have also simplified the process for this purpose. They accept the number of post dated cheques from the investor, retain the cheques with them and keep depositing the cheques on due dates. With the advent of technology and customer orientation, they also accept the ECS process where they take the first cheque and a mandate on the investor’s bank for monthly payments. This is really a simple process, very popular among all classes of investors. The flexibility in this is also in form of various dates to select from a convenient list. The funds have gone further in adding value. They have now fortnightly/weekly SIPs also. An investor may carry on multiple SIPs in a single account/folio on different dates. Apart from convenience, the SIP process offers another commercial advantage to the investor. It is cost averaging and compounding. The investment keeps flowing in on various agreed dates, when the market would obviously at different levels. A similar process is STP (Systematic Transfer Plan), which attempts to further simplify the investment process of SIP. In this case, the investor has an option to shift his liquidity from the bank to a liquid or debt fund, from which just by a mandate, the fund will keep transferring specified amount every month or week, etc. as specified on a particular date to again a specified equity scheme. In this process, the investor has a greater ease on investment. Often, he ends up with twin benefits in doing so. One, he has a flexibility of withdrawing the balance or part thereof from the liquid/debt fund. The other is commercial; i.e., he normally gets at least a little better yield than on the bank deposit – savings bank or current account and with the optimum flexibility of term. We now look at the commercial part of the mutual fund investments. As we noted earlier, the mutual fund offers investment avenues for all classes of investors and for all kinds of requirements. The basic argument in favour of the mutual fund are :
We have broadly covered the basic terms and the ground rules relating to the mutual funds. In the next article, we propose to discuss various kinds of equity funds, debt funds, their peculiarities, usefulness, comparability with other avenues, limitations, precautions required, etc., with facts, figures and illustrations to make the exercise more realistic. This will be interesting and will clear some of the myths and prejudices some of us carry for or against various asset classes. |