What is Mutual Fund

A Mutual Fund is a body corporate registered with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) that pools up the money from individual / corporate investors and invests the same on behalf of the investors /unit holders, in equity shares, Government securities, Bonds, Call money markets etc., and distributes the profits. In other words, a mutual fund allows an investor to indirectly take a position in a basket of assets

What is a Systematic Investment Plan and how does it operate?

A systematic investment plan is one where an investor contributes a fixed amount every month and at the prevailing NAV the units are credited to his account. Today many funds are offering this facility.

Which was the First Mutual Fund to be set up in India?

Unit Trust of India is the first Mutual Fund set up under a separate act, UTI Act in 1963, and started its operations in 1964 with the issue of units under the scheme US-64

What are the benefits of s Systematic Investment Plan?

A systematic investment plan (SIP) offers 2 major benefits to an investor:

• It avoids lump sum investment at one point of time
• In a scenario of falling prices, it reduces your overall cost of acquisition by a process of rupee-cost averaging. This means that at lower prices you end up getting more units for the same investment
  
  which is the other institutions that have floated Mutual Funds in India?

Currently public sector banks like SBI, Canara Bank, Bank of India, institutions like IDBI, GIC, LIC Foreign Institutions like Alliance, Morgan Stanley, Templeton and Private financial companies like Kothari Pioneer, DSP Merrill Lynch, Sundaram, Kotak Mahindra etc. have floated their own mutual funds

What is NAV and how it is calculated?

NAV is the net asset value of the fund. Simply put it reflects what the unit held by an investor is worth at current market prices. For details on calculation methodology and formulae, please click on our mutual fund glossary

How many Mutual Funds are there in India currently?

Presently there are 33 Mutual Funds in India and close to 400 mutual fund schemes. We will very soon be putting up detailed analysis of major schemes operating in India.