Mutual fund investing need not be complex but savers need the right approach and the right tools
22-Feb-2023 •Dhirendra Kumar
Mutual fund investing is quite simple really. Identify some good funds that are suited to meeting your financial goals and invest regularly in them. Rebalance from time to time to maintain the portfolio structure. That's it. Lesson over.
OK, I bet you understand that this is a joke but I wish it wasn't. It really should be as simple as that and even if it never will be so simple, this degree of simplicity is a goal to work towards. Certainly, this is what Value Research has been working towards all these years. Of course, simplicity is supposedly the goal of everyone who is trying to make an investor out of anyone. I had once written about this with the example of the joke about the 'Internet Owl Tutorials'. The tutorial has three steps. (1) Draw a small circle; this will become the head. (2) Draw a large oval below it; this will be the body of the owl. (3) Now just draw the rest of the owl. Was that useful? Did you learn how to draw an owl? On YouTube, and elsewhere on the internet, there are such tutorials about everything from tying shoelaces to constructing a house to derivatives trading to creating your own cryptocurrency.
The obvious question to ask is 'How?'. How are these things to be done? The interesting thing is that just like many of these supposedly simple things, the initial steps are actually not difficult. For mutual fund investing, you can find a ready-made recipe that will enable you to choose the funds to invest in. The advice could be bad or it could be good, especially if you use the facilities on Value Research Online to do this. However, when you have done that, the difficult part is just the beginning. That's the part that goes on and on till you are invested, which is hopefully forever. It requires regular attention to make sure that your investment portfolio stays on track to eventually reach your financial goals. How is that to be done?
Value Research Premium is not just about mutual funds. Instead, it starts with you, the investor. What is your age? What are your financial needs? How much are you able to save? What are your financial goals in life... and many more questions along those lines. Which funds you should invest in comes out of that. Depending on the answers to these questions, the same funds could be perfect for you or useless or even harmful. At Value Research Premium, we do have a short list of handpicked funds that we recommend but different subsets are meant for different people. It's not just about an investment; it's about the match between the investor and the investment.
All this makes Value Research Premium a complex service to describe and to understand (not fit for a TikTok or even YouTube video!) and an equally complex one to evaluate. We've packaged a range of features and services that together do the job - there is no single headline-grabber here. It's only when we look at the whole package and see how they fit together does the real value appear.
Here are the main features:
Portfolio Planner: These are custom portfolios that are suggested to you as part of your Premium membership. The algorithm that we have evolved takes into account your goals, your income, your saving capacity and a number of other factors.
Analysts' Choice: Often, investors want to choose their own funds for some particular investment purpose. There are over 1,500 available to you and even with the help of our rating system, it's a lot of work to zoom in to the right set. However, that won't be a problem for you because as a Premium member, you will have access to Analysts' Choice. Instead of the 37 official types of funds, we have created eight investor-oriented categories which match precisely with actual financial goals that you have. In each of these, my team of analysts and I have carefully selected a handful of funds that will serve you with the best outcomes.
Portfolio Analysis: Only a few members are starting their investing from scratch. For most of you, a big question is whether your existing investments fit into your goals? This is often a hard question to answer because there are a lot of implications of switching old investments, not the least of which is taxation. In the Premium system, you can get an evaluation and a suggested fix-list based on our expert teams' inputs.
A lot more
Of course, those are just headline features. There are a lot more that will help you keep track of your investments, returns, diversification, taxation and practically everything else that will help you achieve your financial goals. Take a look at Value Research Premium for the full details.
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