Best Finance Network
Get the best connectivity about finance.

On January 14, you must have seen the skies filled with colorful kites soaring high up. Makar Sankranti falls on the day when the sun leaves the tropic of Cancer towards the tropic of Capricorn, which is called Makar in India.

In other parts of the country, this festival is referred to as Poush Sankranti, Pongal, and Uttarayan. Farmers celebrate this day as it marks the end of the winter and ushers in the harvesting season.

Significance of kite flying on Makar Sankranti

Sankranti means movement and kite flying represents the thankful attitude of humans for this movement. It also has a scientific significance. As the sun commences its journey towards the tropic of Capricorn, it emanates useful rays. When you fly kites on this day, you expose yourself to the beneficial sunrays that have medicinal advantages.

Although Makar Sankranti is over, it is essential that you know about several important lessons this auspicious festival teaches as these teachings may prove to be beneficial during financial planning. Listed below are six important lessons this festival teaches you.

1. Be ready for movement

When you undertake investment planning, you have to understand that it is not a static one-time procedure but requires constant movement. You need to continuously monitor the performance of your long-term investments and make modifications when necessary. Additionally, you need to review and analyze market conditions to identify good opportunities that offer economic advantages to your investment portfolio. When you consider different financial instruments, it is crucial you consider your investment objectives to make the right decisions. This customization of your investment portfolio is comparable to personalizing your kite that has the perfect string which allows it to soar high in the clear skies.

2. Keep your eyes on your portfolio

When you fly your kite on Makar Sankranti, it is important to keep your eyes on it at all times. You must always be aware of how your kite is flying and in which direction. Similarly, prudent financial planning requires that you keep an eye on the performance of your investment portfolio. The performance of the various financial instruments must be in line with your short, medium, and long-term goals.

3. Maintain flexibility

As you fly your kite, you need the string to be kept flexible. This allows your kite to continue soaring amidst gusts of strong winds. This is true even with your short-term and long-term investments. Their performance will not always be the same and there may be ups and downs. Furthermore, the investment environment is not always conducive because conditions are never perfect. There is a possibility that your portfolio may be in the red. You need to ride out the difficult times and remain patient. It is crucial you are flexible and willing to bear temporary losses in the short-term to reap long-term benefits. However, you must never lose sight of your investment objectives and make modifications that become necessary under changing environments.

4. Adequate safety

To ensure you do not injure yourself, you cover your fingers with tapes and bandages while flying a kite. Similarly, you need to ensure adequate security when investing in any financial product. You must protect your investments from significant market conditions.

5. Remain invested

When you fly your kite on Makar Sankranti, you stand the entire day to make gains. Similarly, when you invest in different financial instruments, it is important to remain invested for a longer period. It is said that time in the market is better than timing the market. Therefore, to maximize your gains through investments, it is recommended you hold these for a longer time.

6. Strike the right balance

During winters, days are short and nights are long and vice versa during the summers. However, on Makar Sankranti, the day and night are of an equal length. Just like that, when you invest, you must aim for the right balance between your risks and returns. You must choose financial products that suit your risk appetite while delivering decent returns on your investments.

Striking the right balance between risk and return requires adequate research and effective planning. You need to study the market conditions and understand the features of different financial instruments. This may not be an easy task especially if you are new to investing or have no experience in conducting such analyses.

Through the proprietary ARQ investment engine in Angel Wealth’s mobile application, you can achieve this balance. This engine uses algorithms and quants to analyze a billion data points and offers recommendations that suit your financial objectives and risk appetite. There is no human intervention in the entire procedure ensuring the recommendations are completely unbiased.

Download the Angel Wealth mobile app and apply the lessons learned from Makar Sankranti into practice.

The listing of a private company on the stock exchange is known as Initial Public Offering (IPO). It is at this point that investors are invited to bid for buying the shares of the company that was held privately thus far. Based on the past performance of the company, the offer price range is determined and once all bids are received, generally shares are allocated on a pro-rata basis.

The crazy chase to invest in IPO

IPO investments attract a lot of investors as it has the potential to give very high returns. It is believed that the investment made at the time of IPO give high returns at the time of listing. However, as with other types of equities, there is a high risk involved when you invest in an IPO.

The funds raised through an IPO are used for several purposes by the company. These include clearing off debts, expanding and improving their operations, or using it to meetworking capital needs.

Before you choose to invest in IPOs, you must remember that all IPOs are not open to general public. The underwriters choose the category of people for which the IPO is opened.

If you opt to invest in IPOs, you must be aware of the risks associated with these financial products. Here are four things you should keep in mind while investing in an IPO.

1. All offerings are not suitable for all kinds of investors. Consider your financial situation and goals before making a decision.

2. Read the draft red herring prospectus. This will help you understand how the funds will be utilized. The prospectus also provides information about the objectives and fundamentals of the company and its future growth prospects.

3. You must rely on facts and not fall prey to marketing strategies used by agencies to entice investors.

4. Analyze the promoters and their backgrounds. IPOs that have reputed institutions and government backing are safer.

Investing in an IPO must be a well-thought decision. It is important to ensure the risk level suits your personal financial situation and appetite. With IPO investments, you may make money or lose your capital; therefore, be cautious before you apply for one.

Investing in IPO through mutual funds

As mentioned before, if an IPO has institutional or government investments, the risks are significantly reduced. Until recently, mutual funds did not invest in IPOs because of the high risks. However, that is no longer the case. Mutual funds have recently begun investing in quality IPOs issued by small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

Here are three benefits of investing in IPOs through mutual funds.

1. Investing in mutual funds online for retail investors is easily available and provides greater flexibility. You are able to gain exposure to the stock market at an affordable entry price.

2. The schemes are managed by experienced professionals who analyze and study the IPOs and the overall market. This reduces your risks because the fund managers and their research teams do the homework for you. Moreover, you are able to diversify your portfolio further reducing your risks.

3. IPO allotment often happens on a pro-rata basis. Therefore, you may be allotted less than the applied number of shares. However, institutions have a preferential allotment, which is beneficial.

Equity-linked saving schemes, or ELSS, are essentially close ended mutual fund schemes that offer tax benefits under the section 80C of the Income Tax Act, which means that you can reduce your tax liability. Such funds do not have any restriction on number of shares issued. They are diversified thereby allocating capital in a variety of assets in a way that reduces exposure to risk thereby mitigating loss schemes offered through mutual funds.

The unique feature of this scheme is that one can avail a maximum deduction of Rs. 1.5 lakh invested into these funds from his/her income during a financial year. This in turn, would help in saving tax of up to Rs. 46,350/- (if one falls in the highest income slab) during a financial year. ELSS also offers greater liquidity as the lock in period in these funds is only 3 years in comparison to PPF which has lock in period of 15 years. Further, by choosing for the ‘Dividend Payout’ option in the ELSS, investors can receive tax free dividends from their investment prior to the maturity of the scheme. Thus, these funds are efficient tax saving investments with the least lock in period and a superior performance track record.

This is a hugely underappreciated advantage of investing in an equity-linked saving schemes. Many prefer instruments such as Public Provident Fund, life insurance policies that are comparatively long term instruments where the primary goal of investing is either safeguarding your loved ones after you are no more or in the case of PPF whereby the idea to save for retirement.

While one can look at ELSS purely from a tax saving perspective of saving taxes, they can also serve as investments towards long term goals. The equity element in ELSS allows investors to systematically create wealth in the long run.

Picking mutual funds for investment is easier than picking the right time to invest in them. We give you five hints to help you choose.

Every investor knows that in order to make money, he must put the money he currently has to good use. Simply letting the money sit in the bank or investing it in such instruments as real estate and gold do not always yield the best results. Besides, if the investor has both short term and long term goals, he may need to look at mutual fund investment.

But despite wishing to invest in mutual funds in India, many factors can hold an investor back. In terms of mutual funds, ‘how’ is often not as important as ‘when’. Consider these five pointers to help yourself decide when to invest in mutual funds:

1 When you do your research.

You must be willing to put in hours of study on both the fund you are interested in and the fund house. Choosing the best mutual funds cannot be a snap decision, and it cannot be based on the current favourite in the market. The fund you purchase must offer the potential for growth that you seek to realise your short term and long term financial goals. Apart from the fund, you must select the right fund manager as well. Conducting due diligence is the crucial first step to investing in the best mutual funds in India.

2 Study the fund manager’s record over three years.

Investors are often tempted to see short term results of the fund manager they wish to work with. However, experts will tell you that any amount of time short of three years is too less to analyse the manager’s performance. Analyse his track record over three to five years and discuss the various strategies he has adopted over the years vis-à-vis market fluctuations and asset allocation.

3 Choose a manager with the same investment style as yours.

A fund manager is not a magician who can convert your mutual fund investment into piles of money. Nor is he a mathematician who follows provable theorems with predictable outcomes. A fund manager studies the markets and interprets them every day, and bases his decisions on his understanding and skill. The gains may be slow in coming in some cases, while another of his decisions can fetch a windfall. However, his investment style must align with yours, or there may be conflict in reaching your fiscal goals.

4 Pick the fund of the best available ones.

Studying market forces every day and picking the right mutual fund is important for the proper realisation of your financial goals. Most people tend to go with the popular choice, or expect a long term fund to generate constant growth in the short term. Discussing the fund’s growth with your manager regularly, reading reports by financial companies and looking up the workings of the best mutual funds relays valuable information.

5 Be certain that it is the best way to create wealth.

Investing in mutual funds is a matter of faith and being open to a little risk. Sometimes, all calculations can go awry and mutual funds may show extremely low returns. Hence, it is important to be convinced about the decision to invest in a mutual fund. Only when the investor is certain that they will give the best returns will the investor be confident about putting in his money in them.

Overview

Mutual funds are one of the best ways for people to enjoy a high rate of return over the long term. A mutual fund is generally a collection of stocks that are chosen by the fund manager. There are some fees associated with investing in a mutual fund, but generally the rate of return that is offered will offset the higher fees. One of the most important things for any investors to do is to reevaluate the mutual funds that are owned every year. Over the long term, this can be a great way to take a look at the overall strategy that is in place with your investments. Here are several reasons why this is so important.

Diversification

Having a diversified portfolio is one of the most important aspects of earning a solid return over time. There are many people who have too much of their portfolio invested in one type of mutual fund. Spreading out the capital that is invested in various mutual funds is a great way to diversify the funds that a person owns. Over the long term, a diversified portfolio generally has lower rates of risk than portfolios that are not diversified.

Better Selection

Over time, an investor can have a better selection of funds by looking at them every year. Although the past is the best way to gauge the future, there are some funds that have performed well in the past that are not performing well now. This would only be noticed by taking a hard look at the funds that are owned by a person. By taking an unbiased look, an investor can decide to reallocate his or her funds into different sectors of the market. This can make a huge difference over time in the rate of return that is offered by the investments.

Rate of Return

The rate of return that an investor earns on his or her portfolio is one of the most important metrics to follow. There are many different ways in which the rate of return can be increased. Always make sure that a portfolio is diversified over the long term. In addition, there is a correlation between risk and return. Younger investors can afford to take on a higher level of risk because they have more time to recover from the risk. This is important to keep in mind for those who are just starting out investing. By looking at all of your funds every year, this is a great opportunity to invest in those funds that will go up more in the future. Over the long term, this will help to boost the rate of return that is earned.

Final Thoughts

Mutual funds are a great way to have a diversified portfolio that has a proven track record of success. However, it is important to choose the correct mutual funds to invest in. There are many different sectors and funds for investors to choose from. One of the best ways to keep a portfolio working over time is to constantly reevaluate the investments that are made. This is one of the best things that any investor can do in order to have a high rate of return over the long term.

Jessica Kane is a professional blogger who focuses on personal finance and other money matters. She currently writes for Checkworks.com, a leading supplier of personal and business checks.