[sgiitk]

Over the years I made good money with mutual funds, mostly large cap oriented, But after Covid with market oscillations, I gave up. Now I have got off MFs almost totally.

Remember at 70+ you cannot be as sharp either. I was relying on my bank Stanchart for some time. But now I have closed all my MF (and share) accounts. The markets as still very volatile. Also, in move from Kanpur to Gurugram and buying a flat I used up a lot of money.

I will still recommend MFs but will avoid the direct route and get a good advisor.

[vijaykr]

Originally Posted by sgiitk

I will still recommend MFs but will avoid the direct route and get a good advisor.

Unless someone is conversant with investment options in general with an idea of what MFs are and their attendant risks, people should not jump into MFs for sake of FOMO etc.

In my opinion, folks that have been investing in MFs for a while (7-10 years or more) should continue to keep a portion of their investments in MFs even in old age as part of a diversified portfolio. How much this % should be depends on the individual's situation and risk appetite. But a simple Sensex/Nifty Index provides the equity exposure for potential inflation beating return at low cost.

And yes, getting professional financial advice is better than DIY for newbies, but key is to make sure MF investments thru distributors/advisors is into Direct funds and not Regular ones.

[ashvek3141]

Originally Posted by vijaykr

And yes, getting professional financial advice is better than DIY for newbies, but key is to make sure MF investments thru distributors/advisors is into Direct funds and not Regular ones.

Financial advisors / distributors will never agree for a DIRECT fund; else what is the benefit for them giving you their time & advice?

[sups]

Originally Posted by ashvek3141

Financial advisors / distributors will never agree for a DIRECT fund; else what is the benefit for them giving you their time & advice?

Fee-only advisers suggest funds based on individual goals and all investments are only in DIRECT funds:
https://www.feeonlyindia.com/list-of-fee-only-planners

[vijaykr]

Originally Posted by sups

Fee-only advisers suggest funds based on individual goals and all investments are only in DIRECT funds:
https://www.feeonlyindia.com/list-of-fee-only-planners

Absolutely this is the way to go for financial advice. Di not engage anyone who charges based on a % of your corpus. Over time, the corpus will grow and you would be making additional investments as well via SIPs or lumpsum. Unless the advisor wants to keep changing funds in the portfolio, things should be mostly continuation with initial funds. So advisor's time and analysis will not be increasing continuously over years as well. Given that, there should not be a need to pay higher fees over the years.

The list of fee-only advisors that @sups has given above is a good place to start looking for a financial advisor.

[JediKnight]

I am a DIY investor and directly invest using the AMC's website. I have large portfolios with ICICI/HDFC/ABSL, medium portfolio with SBI/IDFC(Now Bandhan) and a small amount of money with Edelwiess (Bharat Bond only). I have dedicated relationship managers for ICICI/HDFC/ABSL. Here is my review of the AMC based on my experience:

Rank 1: ICICI.
1. The best in AMC in India as per my experience.
2. Terrific fund performances across sectors.
3. Very good online platform.
4. Terrific customer engagement.
- Effective relationship managers.
- Regular follow-ups and genuine good advice.

Rank 2: HDFC
1. Good fund performances across sectors.
2. Very good online platform.
3. Moderate customer engagement.
-Somehow HDFC relationship teams
are not as engaged/energized as ICICI
-I see decrease in HDFC performance
which coincides with Mr Prashant Jain
leaving. Earlier they used to be at par
with ICICI.

Rank 3:ABSL
1. Good fund performances across sectors.
2. Good online platform.
3. OK-Ok customer engagement.
Far behind ICICI and even HDFC.

Rank 4: SBI
1. OK-OK fund performances across sectors.
I have noticed SBI is conservative compared to
its peers for the same fund type. Hence underperforming.
But may have an edge in case the market tanks.
2. Good online platform.
3. OK-Ok customer engagement.



Rank 10 : IDFC/Bandhan
(Ranked 10 on purpose to highlight AMCs level relative to the ones listed above)
1. Ultra poor/money destroying performance in debt category.
Cannot comment on equity since I only have debt in this AMC.
I will exit this AMC completely after 3 years to get triple indexation benefit.
. 2. Good online platform.
3. Non-existent customer engagement.

Unranked: Edelwiess. Not interacted much hence not formed an opinion.

[Small Bot]

I have invested in mutual funds from 3 AMCs. ICICI, UTI and Nippon.

ICICI is really good. The mobile app is very simple and functional. I always get assistance from an RM assigned to me, so the experience has been great. I have some select debt funds in ICICI, and they are consistently good at what they do.

UTI app is better and more engaging than ICICI. Most of their index fund offerings also have been around for a long while, especially the UTI Nifty 50 fund. The fund managers also seem solid and the TER remains reasonable.

Nippon is a mixed bag. Their index funds have done well, but several are new and have a limited track record. Their older active funds have dinosaur-sized AUMs, which is not always a great thing. The app and the website have been horrible and glitchy in the past. Even stopping an SIP once made me do the same cancellation twice - once via app and again via website.

[vijaykr]

Originally Posted by JediKnight

Rank 10 : IDFC/Bandhan
(Ranked 10 on purpose to highlight AMCs level relative to the ones listed above)
1. Ultra poor/money destroying performance in debt category.

There are many funds in the debt category from this AMC. Can you clarify which ones you're referring to for poor performance? I ask because I've invested in corporate bond and short term funds. While not stellar, the returns from these two have been ok-ok so far. Thanks

[ashvek3141]

Can someone please guide me on how to export the entire MF list via excel from value research? I tried exporting from the 'Best Mutual Funds' tab, but I find some really good MF's missing from that particular list like Canara Robeco Emerging Equities. I don't understand what according to value research is 'best' than?

Hence, I wanted to get the COMPLETE list of MF's as I am looking to start a new SIP in coming month.

Also please guide me if I am doing it all wrong.

[DigitalOne]

Originally Posted by JediKnight

I am a DIY investor and directly invest using the AMC's website. I have large portfolios with ICICI/HDFC/ABSL...

I am also a DIY/AMC Website investor with substantial investments in ICICI, HDFC, ABSL, DSP, Franklin Templeton, Nippon, PPFAS and minor investment in Quant MF. There are assigned relationship managers for most of the AMCs but I generally do not pick their calls at all or go by their advice.

Since fund performance is typically fund specific and not AMC specific (Quant AMC seems to be an outlier on the positive side), I will not rank the AMCs but give some observations based on my long investment duration.

ICICI - Good website with some quirks. For example, you cannot cancel an STP. They will ask you to cancel using the CAMS website (more on CAMS later).

In the past ICICI has done some shenanigans by propping up ICICIDirect IPO and ICICI Bharat 22 ETF using their mutual funds. So I do not trust them fully. Most of the investments are in index funds and debt funds with only one active fund (Value Discovery fund).

HDFC - My highest investments are with HDFC. Fantastic website. Recently they/CAMS have moved from a simple PDF statement to a 'smart' statement. This is a big irritant. You have to run hoops to check your latest transaction.

ABSL - Ok-ish website as long as you don't do too many transactions. When SEBI forced fund categorization and subsequent merger of funds, there was one instance where I could buy a non-existent (i.e. merged) fund .

DSP - Definitely the best AMC website amongst the ones that I use.

Franklin Templeton - Great website. I did not redeem from any of the funds after their 2020 debt funds fiasco and have also restarted investing slowly into FT Hybrid equity fund. They seem earnest enough to regain the trust.

PPFAS - Superb website. Most of my new investments now go into the PPFAS equity and conservative hybrid funds.

Nippon - Good set of funds but really bad website. I am using KFINTech who are registrars for Nippon AMC to do all transactions. When this AMC was Reliance (ADAG) managed AMC, they had major trust issues; Debt funds of this AMC used to buy disproportionate amount of bonds from group companies which were in trouble.

Quant - AMC seems to be doing very well in the equity space. So have done a small investment in their recent Quant Momentum fund NFO. Let's see how it goes. Transaction was done using KFintech.

AMCs where I had investments earlier but redeemed as part of consolidation - HSBC, IDFC, Quantum, Motilal Oswal.

KFintech Website - Used for Quant and Nippon; Pretty good website; does the job

CAMS Website - Buggy and pathetic website. I can't understand how the AMCs are tolerating this level of service, when they would be paying so much to CAMS to maintain their operations.

[Gansan]

Originally Posted by Latheesh

Need help!

I would like to invest small amount monthly for 2 kids

I used only one avenue - PPF - for my son. The money I invested in PPF every year was intended only for his college education. Needless to say, it always was more than my 80c requirement for the year. When the account matured I renewed it for another five years and continued investing. The five year period ended when he finished class X and I had just two years left to retire, so I did not extend it further. Instead I put the entire proceeds in a cumulative bank FD for two years. When it matured, I used some of it to pay his NIT admission and first semester fees, then made seven FDs each of which will mature on the date when his subsequent seven semester fees will fall due and cover the entire fee. I witdhrew the rest of the money and added it to my nest egg! It worked out well for me!

[JediKnight]

Originally Posted by vijaykr

Can you clarify which ones you're referring to for poor performance?

Bandhan Banking and PSU Direct Growth: Annualized return 4.92%. Duration of investment: 1072 Days

Bandhan Corporate Bond Find Direct Growth : Annualized return 4.6%. Duration of investment: 1104 Days

Originally Posted by DigitalOne

..relationship managers for most of the AMCs but I generally do not pick their calls at all or go by their advice.

RMs usually are young kids who are more nuisance than anything else. But you can get access to senior wealth management people inside if you build a relationship with them and have large enough portfolio. You can get tips and information that is not yet available in public domain. Of course you have to be careful to judge what is useful information and what is marketing spiel.

Originally Posted by DigitalOne

Franklin Templeton - Great website. I did not redeem from any of the funds after their 2020 debt funds fiasco and have also restarted investing slowly into FT Hybrid equity fund. They seem earnest enough to regain the trust.

I had big investment in FT short term debt fund. Just managed to get my money out before they shut down the fund. I have lost trust in foreign AMCs. They are fair weather friends. They hide behind rules and runaway when the going gets tough.

[astrodex]

My understanding on long term investment is always to invest and forget until retirement. With that in mind, I've kept investing small but consistent amounts into various instruments as I kept understanding the market. Initially it was normal mutual funds via regular, then moved to Direct route, then moved to index funds and am now mostly doing index ETFs.

I treat these very much like 401K accounts where I don't go and take money out. To date, I haven't liquidated any of my folios, I just stop investing in the old one and move to the new one. Fortunately, I haven't had the need to immediately liquidate them.

How many others take this approach, or are most people actively moving money around, which I believe is actually trading than investing. I ask since most people here are talking about the website usage, transactions etc. and here I am thinking that MFs are almost all very long term investments. Ideally, my expectation is to keep investing as SIP till the pivot point, which could be retirement or a little earlier and then switch to SWP. In that scenario the AMC MFUOnline app is more than enough for me.

[whitewing]

Originally Posted by astrodex

I treat these very much like 401K accounts where I don't go and take money out. To date, I haven't liquidated any of my folios, I just stop investing in the old one and move to the new one.

One part which may turn tax efficient is to do tax harvesting (LTCG gains of 1L p.a is tax free) this will add up over the years.
Here, it is worthwhile to avoid liquidating folios older than 2018 since the gains originating from these would still be tax free.

[Fx14]

Originally Posted by whitewing

Here, it is worthwhile to avoid liquidating folios older than 2018 since the gains originating from these would still be tax free.

Small correction here. The LTCG are not totally tax free, but taxable for the proportionate amount above the "GRAND FATHERED PRICE".