A guide to mutual fund investment
March 29, 2007 14:30 IST M utual funds can be broadly classified into two categories in terms of the fund management style i.e. actively managed funds and passively managed funds (popularly referred to as index funds). Actively managed funds are the ones wherein the fund manager uses his skills and expertise to select invest-worthy stocks from across sectors and market segments. The sole intention of actively managed funds is to identify various investment opportunities in the market in order to clock superior returns, and in the process outperform the designated benchmark index. On the contrary, passively managed funds/index funds are aligned to a particular benchmark index like the S&P CNX Nifty or the BSE Sensex. The endeavor of these funds is to mirror the performance of the designated benchmark index, by investing only in the stocks of the index with the corresponding allocation or weightage. In the Indian context, index funds have never really caught the retail