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@MaxTorque: What do you mean by "direct investment"? Is your broker charging something for the service?
I use FundsIndia and so far I have not been disappointed. Infact I am going to also subscribe to their Equity platform (which they have now started recently) to have a single window to all my investments. They do not charge anything for investing in MF.

With regards to HDFC and DSP, they are both doing badly. So, I will not renew my SIP with them after October but will stay invested for 3-5 years.

I guess he is referring to the direct plans. Now every mutual fund scheme has two options, regular and direct. In direct plans, you invest directly with the mutual fund with no agent or distributor in between. In this case ,you get a slightly higher return since no commission is deducted from your investments.

Rishab has already explained what I meant to say. The difference in returns between regular and direct investment may vary from 0.2 to 1% depends upon the fund and fund house. I too use Funds India service. Their products are innovative. But some times it is not very convenient for me. Because we need to send all communications to Chennai by courier. As almost all fund houses are offering online investment, we can go for direct plans via AMC's website.

You can also invest online directly from the mutual fund website itself into the direct funds where there is no brokerage involved. I am doing it for IDFC, Quantum and HDFC. The only downside is you cant view all your mutual funds at one place though cams does send a consolidated statement.
I dont know about Fundsindia, but in ICICIDirect, brokerage is a lil heavy. For a SIP of 5000, the total outgo for me is 5033.

This can be done by registering on website like, Moneycontrol, Valuerearchonline etc. without any fee.

Why didn't I think of that? Thank you for the suggestion

You are welcome mate. The only problem is you need to feed all details once. If your portfolio is of SIPs and funds are less, then its easy.

Well, to be honest, I have not seen any brokerage charged by FundsIndia.

There is an initial setup paper-work - just once, and not to be done per fund house. I have investments in 5-6 fund houses and I have sent them just one set of documents (KYC).

Funds India won't charge us directly. Their commission is directly paid by AMCs and adjusted on NAVs.

Markets are on fire, but I am still keeping off as I suspect a Bull Trap.

Sir, I was contemplating investing in some debt as given my rudimentary understanding of MF, I assume that debt funds should provide 'decent' returns (read more than FDs post taxes) since interest rates are unlikely to go north.

Would you recommend Ultra short term debt over short term debt since the former seem to have better and more consistent returns if you look at the stats on moneycontrol. Pls note that am looking at a horizon of >1 year for debt funds. A followup question is whether Ultra short debt funds are effective for a >1 yr horizon since I was reading somewhere these invest in instruments which have a very short maturity period

If ultra short debt funds are more effective, would you have any recommendations? (I generally tend to tilt towards HDFC funds for some inexplicable reason :))

regards

What you are stating is correct, but at the moment with Bank Rates (Repo ..) may be headed north, so debt may also be a bit tricky. The NAV drops as soon as the rates are up. I am sticking with FDs for now. Ultra short term debt should be safer, but does not turn me on. Why should I hold ultra short term for over a year?

Hello,

I am new to Mutual Funds or any kind of investments. I read that there is National Pension Scheme operated by Govt. of India. Should I invest in them? I am looking for investing in a plan that would give me more returns than Bank FD's per year. What should I do? I already have a Mutual fund account that my father opened for me, we invested around 2,000 Rs at that time and it has reached only 10,000 Rs in last ten years. Are the returns really that low?

@mercerised; Too early to comment. If for pension maybe, other investment I am not that sure. Also, if you have the option - aggressive till you are 45, balanced till 55 then conservative.

I started investing in October 2012.

IDFC Ultra Short Term Fund-Reg(G) has given me returns of 7.92%. I intended to keep the money for a short time, but since I did not need the money, I continued. Also, the returns were not good last few months, now the figures are better.

On the same day, I invested in DSPBR MIP Fund-Reg(G). This is a debt fund and has given me 4.33% return.

Two months ago, I invested in a liquid fund Templeton India TMA(G). I have gained 1.56%. Again, the figure fluctuates every month, so you cannot withdraw when you want, rather you have to see the markets and then decide. This is supposed to be an alternative to keeping money in your savings account at 4%.

In contrast, I did SIP for equity mutual funds. Now I have completed the SIP's for all 5 funds and I am having a loss of 2.68%. It was much worse a few weeks ago, but something good has happened in the markets, I guess.


The best gamble for me so far has been Franklin Asian Equity Fund(G) and FT India Feeder - Franklin U.S. Opportunities Fund(G). Together they have given me 7.6% gain in just one month.
I presume that I have to pay 10% tax on this amount, just like debt funds, but still this is good.

Hope this manages to confuse you somewhat. :)


@mercedised: If Rs. 2000 becomes Rs. 10000 in 10 years, then the compound annual interest is 16.425%. I think it is pretty good (plus tax free).