It is a known fact that equity investments require time commitment. Besides, a disciplined approach to investing goes a long way in tackling the volatility in the stock market. However, to ensure success on a consistent basis, you would be required to do much more than be patient and disciplined. Different stages of your investment horizon would require you to constantly refine or rejig your investment strategy. Here’s some help:
Focus on core holdings:
Very often, investors chase the performance of a fund when choosing one for investment. A strategy like this can take you beyond your defined risk level. Remember, an aggressive portfolio doesn’t guarantee better performance. Therefore, you need to focus on the core holdings or components of a fund(s) that are managed well and have a consistent performance record. Simply put, you must avoid funds that have been performing inconsistently over different time periods of time.
Review product lines across fund houses:
Most fund houses offer a family of funds, thereby, allowing you to diversify across different asset classes to achieve different investment objectives as well as to invest for different time periods. Therefore, while making an investment decision, it would be wise to review the products on offer from a fund house you are interested in investing. This can be of great help in case you have to make changes in your portfolio, in view of either your investment objective(s) or change in horizon.
It is much more convenient to move money within the same fund house compared to redeeming from one fund house and reinvesting in some other fund house. However, if the performance of alternate fund being considered is not up to the mark, it may not be prudent to go for the convenience alone.
Diversified vs concentrated portfolio:
A common dilemma for investors is to decide whether to opt for a well-diversified fund or to invest in a fund that has a concentrated portfolio. The choice between a diversified and concentrated portfolio would largely depend on your risk profile. A fund with a well-diversified portfolio enables you to spread your investments across different sectors and segments of the market. The idea is that, if one or more stocks do badly, your portfolio is not affected much. At the same time, if one stock does very well, your portfolio can’t reap all the benefits. A diversified fund, therefore, will be an ideal choice if you are looking for steady returns over a longer term.
A fund that has a concentrated portfolio works exactly in the opposite manner. While a fund with a concentrated portfolio has a better chance of giving higher returns, it also exposes you to higher risk during a market downturn. Thus, you should opt for a fund with a concentrated portfolio if you have the capacity to shoulder higher risk in order to improve your returns. The risk of higher volatility can be mitigated by a systematic investment approach.
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Fund size:
Another issue that often worries investors is the size of a fund. Many believe a fund with a huge corpus can become too unwieldy to manage efficiently. However, the fact is that you must look at the fund size in the context of its nature and investment style. A fund’s performance, generally, suffers only in case it outgrows its investment style. For instance, stock picking is key in a mid-cap fund. But if the fund is very large it may force the fund manager to make certain compromises in terms of the investment approach. However, the fund size would not matter for funds, such as index funds, pure large-cap funds and those diversified funds where the fund manager has the flexibility to move assets across different market caps.
Therefore, if the corpus of some of the funds in your portfolio start worrying you (or are too big) , make an informed decision on whether or not to continue investing in that fund.
The writer is CEO, Wiseinvest Advisors