Investing through mutual funds and its benefits

In an article, I have written about benefits of diversification. But small investors face the problem of spreading out their small investing capital across different industries. If you are small investor you cannot diversify effectively owing to variety of factors like having to pay service fees like brokerage commission, minimum investment to be made in one particular security.

The solution to above mentioned problems can be solved by investing through mutual funds. Mutual funds are investment vehicle made up of pool of moneys collected by large number of investors for the purpose of investing in securities, bonds and other financial markets instruments.

There are many benefits of investing through mutual fund. When you invest through mutual funds, you get to enjoy the benefits of diversification. Your mutual fund asset manager has enough capital to invest across variety of assets, hence delivering you the benefit of diversification.

Another benefit of investing through such vehicle is enjoying economies of scale. Your fund can bargain discounted prices for investments. Moreover, other favorable terms can also be agreed because of increased collective bargaining power.

Your fund manager is a professional manager who has learnt about investing through experience and university learning. He is therefore better able to manage your money in a professional style. He can diversify using various statistical techniques. The third advantage of investing through mutual funds is being able to use the skills of professional manager.

There are as many as 40 mutual funds registered with SECP. You can invest in any of the funds mirroring your preferred style of investing.

Some of the funds use aggressive style of investing. They try to generate more returns but the down side is that they are more risky. Some others are income funds, which target generating regular income along with securing your capital.

There are sector funds which invest in specific geographical territory or specific industry e.g. energy mutual funds invest only in stocks and bonds of energy companies. They don’t invest in other industries. As a fund become more specific towards particular territory or industry, its ability to diversify reduces. Try to invest in funds which have consistent track record of generating returns. Although the returns generated by mutual funds are dependent on performance of stock markets.   

There are two types of funds 1. Open ended mutual funds 2. Closed ended mutual funds

Open ended funds are available over the counter and bought and sold on demand. Their net asset value (NAV) is calculated at the end of every trading day whereas closed ended funds are those which are only available on the stock market and has fixed number of shares.

Investing strategies: used by billionaires to amass their fortunes

There are many investing strategies, which investors use. Value investing, contrarian investing and growth investing are mostly used investing strategies. Let’s briefly study them.

Value investing is the most successful investing strategy. It was founded by Benjamin Graham, mentor of Warren Buffet. In this strategy investors see for underpriced securities based on some formula other than market price. This formula for ascertaining the value of the security is generally some multiple of income of the corporation. Value investors usually have to wait for longer in order to realize the full value of their assets.

Along with Warren Buffet many other successful investors follow the value investing strategy of investing. According to researches value investing proved to be the most successful way of investing.  Many billionaire investors favor value investing over other forms of investing. Warren Buffet, Howard Marks, Seth Andrew Klarman, Charles Brandes, Walter J. Schloss, Irving Kahn, Mario Joseph Gabelli, Michael F. Price   are some of most successful value investors.     

Another strategy is contrarian investing. Contrarian investing is buying when other people are selling and selling when other people are buying. Every up and down in the overall stock market or some specific share price offers opportunity of selling and buying to these contrarians respectively.  Warren Buffet is also sometimes referred to as contrarian investor, owing to the obvious reason of many similarities between contrarian and value investing strategy. Other famous proponents of contrarian investing are Michael F. Price, James Beeland Rogers, Marc Faber, David Dreman, Mark E. Ripple, and William Albert Ackman.

Growth investing is another strategy which many successful investors use.  Those who follow growth investing strategy invest in companies that show above average growth even when their shares seem to be highly priced. Unlike value investors, growth investors buy stock in companies that are trading higher than their intrinsic value-assuming that the intrinsic value would grow eventually exceeding current valuations. These investors focus on capital appreciation. Venture capital funds can be classified as growth investors.   

Diversification (Finance) and its benefits

Diversification is the most important technique available to investors. It helps you avoid losing all of your money in financial crisis. Diversification is allocating your investing capital to different asset classes with the goal to reduce your total risk. 

 

But question arises as to why to invest in variety of assets when some may perform poorly.  Why not invest only in assets with greater returns.  The simple answer is that investment returns depend on variety of future events, which nobody can reliably predict.

Diversification can help reduce the risk associated with these future events.

Making diversification effective can take more than simply spreading out your money in more than one asset. The real benefits of your diversification strategy can be fully achieved by owning uncorrelated multiple asset classes which behave differently under different economic conditions.

For example, having a portfolio of 30 oil and gas stocks isn’t diversification. Even owning stocks and bonds may not be sufficiently diversified. Investing in variety of unrelated industries is real diversification.   

Different assets are exposed to different types of risks. If one asset perform badly there are good chances that other assets would perform well and would nullify the impact of bad-performing asset.

Investors should distribute their investments in assets with varying degree of liquidity, risk, and potential of earning. If you are investing in financial markets, you may diversify by investing in real assets like gold or real estate. Financial markets also offer avenues for diversification. Bond market often moves in opposing direction to that of equity. Investing in bonds can save you during period of falling share prices.

Although no amount of diversification can save you from complete disaster but it provides your assets with considerable protection against random events.

   

One more Asian billionaire every other day: UBS study finds

According to a study by UBS and PwC a billionaire in Asia is created every other day. Total billionaires in Asia are 637 as compared to 563 in U.S. The study further says that a 17% surge in billionaire wealth is supported by new billionaires born in Asia as well as an uptick in growth in materials, industrial, financial and technology sectors.

The total billionaire wealth has increased from USD 5.1 trillion to USD 6 trillion in 2016.

Billionaires from United States owns 2.8 trillion USD, an increase of .4 trillion dollars. Combined wealth of Asian billionaires grew from 1.5 trillion dollars to 2 trillion USD. Combined total wealth of 342 European billionaires was 1.3 trillion USD.

The study also mentioned that if the current trend continued, it is likely that Asian billionaires would overtake U.S. billionaires in wealth in four years. The surge in billionaires’ population in Asia can be attributed to growth in China and India, which have 318 and 100 billionaires respectively.

The report further points to increasing role of networks in raising capital outside financial markets which is no surprise, given the increasing role of Asian businesses which feels comfortable going to family rather than capital markets for funds.

Europe, the report says, in 2016 was the story of multigenerational wealth preservation. The number of billionaires in Europe was 342, by the end of the year.

The business controlled by these billionaire employees 27.7 million people, which is roughly the size of U.K. workforce.