Introduction to the Stock market and Mutual Funds

Dear Friend,
I hope you read and loved my previous 2 posts on this blog. Now, you have basic understanding of Earning and Saving money.
As famously said there are two types of people in World, One who know share trading and another are those who don't know which bird share trading is.
If you haven't started the share trading yet, don't worry there is always a first time for everyone. I also started Trading 6 years back accidentally. I opened my first Demat account just because my company was giving its employees some shares to mark its 30 years of listing on the stock exchange. That's how my journey started. Now, it’s my turn to pass-on the knowledge to you to make your journey smooth and easy.
1.      Stock market/ Share Trading :
The stock market is a place where stocks and bonds are "traded" – i.e. bought and sold. The primary goal of trading is to buy the stock, hold it for a time, and then sell the stock for more than you paid for it.
BSE and NSE: platforms to buy and sell shares
In India, primarily the share trading in the stock market takes place on the two stock exchanges: the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and the National Stock Exchange (NSE). The BSE started its operations in 1875. The NSE started some years back in 1994. Both exchanges follow the same trading mechanism, trading hours, settlement process, etc.
Market Indexes
The two important Indian market indexes are Sensex and Nifty. Sensex  includes shares of 30 firms listed on the BSE,
Second index is the Nifty; it includes 50 shares listed on the NSE.
Now you have a slight idea what Stocks/shares are and where they are traded. I will give the finer details about investment in my next post.

2. Mutual Funds
Mutual funds are the pool of money that is maintained by the AMC, Asset Management Company. AMC invests the money, collected from all it investors, in various investment options to achieve profits.  The Mutual Funds usually invest their funds in equities, bonds, debentures, Gold, etc, depending on the objectives and terms.
Each AMC appoint Fund Managers, who are professionally qualified, to manage the money poured by investors. For these services, AMC charge a small fee mostly in the range of 1.5 to 3%.
NAV means Net Asset Value.   The investments made by a Mutual Fund are marked to market on daily basis.   In other words, we can say that current market value of such investments is calculated on daily basis.  NAV is calculated after deducting all liabilities of the fund and dividing by number of units outstanding. NAV on a particular day reflects the value that the investor will get for each unit if the scheme is sold on that date.  This NAV keeps on changing with the changes in the market rates of equity and bond markets.  Therefore, the investments in Mutual Funds are not risk free, but a well-managed Fund can give better returns than some other investment options.
VARIOUS TYPES OF MUTUAL FUNDS :
For a first time investor the mutual fund market is so much confusing that he is afraid of investing in these funds as he cannot differentiate between different types of Mutual Funds.
To make the tedious task simpler for you, Mutual Funds can be classified into following categories under the following different heads:-
1.      ACCORDING TO TYPE OF INVESTMENTS :-
When launching a new scheme, all Mutual Fund houses are obliged to declare the kind of instruments in which it will make investments of the funds collected under that scheme. So, the following is the list of Mutual fund types based on type of investment            
  • ·         EQUITY FUNDS
  • ·         DEBT FUNDS
  • ·         INDEX FUNDS
  • ·         SECTOR SPECIFIC FUNDS
  • ·         DIVERSIFIED FUNDS
  • ·         GILT FUNDS
  • ·         MONEY MARKET FUNDS


2.  ACCORDING TO THE TIME OF CLOSURE OF THE SCHEME: 
When launching a new scheme, Mutual Funds also declare whether it will be an open ended scheme (i.e. there is no specific date when the scheme will be closed) or there is a closing date when the investments will be redeemed.  Thus, according to the time of closure schemes are classified as follows:-
·         OPEN ENDED SCHEMES
·         CLOSE ENDED SCHEMES

3.  ACCORDING TO TAX INCENTIVE SCHEMES:  Mutual Funds are also allowed to have some tax saving schemes.
·         TAX SAVING FUNDS
·         NOT TAX SAVING FUNDS / OTHER FUNDS

4. ACCORDING TO THE PAYMENT OF DIVIDEND
·         Dividend payment option
·         Dividend Re-investment option
·         Growth option

As mostly clear from the name itself, Mutual funds with Dividend payment option pay-out the dividend to its investor at some interval of time. Whereas, in Dividend re-payment option, the declared dividend is re-invested and resulting units are given to investor.
In Growth option all focus is on increasing the NAV of the units. There is no Dividend paid in this option.
The mutual fund schemes come with various combinations of the above categories.  Therefore, we can have an Equity Fund which is open ended and is dividend paying plan.
These are some basic details of the Stock market and Mutual funds. Hope you found it interesting. In my nest post, I will focus more on the finer details of investment tips and tricks in Share market and Mutual funds .
Stay tuned!


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