Mutual Funds: Good Prospects

Mutual funds being a link between the savers and investors, are placed at a strategic position in a nation's economy. The MFs give a standard portfolio to investors for risk diversification.The fund managers deploy different investment strategies and styles, research methods etc.. to deliver good returns irrespective of the market fluctuations. Ordinary investors lack the capital,knowledge, experience and capacity in terms of fund management. So far there are about 30 MFs registered under SEBI offering more than 650 products. http://www.amfiindia.com/showhtml.asp?page=mfindustry
The NAV is published by evening 7.00pm on the website of the AMFI to eliminate any manipulation of the data on csah flows from/to the funds.Tax saving schemes are generally on sale across the months, but particularly in January-March the last lap is available for investors to complete their shopping for the current fiscal. In the early weeks of Jan 2007, UTI, Canbank, Optimix (from ING Vysya) are in the market with fresh products among others. MIN was made mandatory from 1st Jan 2007 and subsequently replaced by the budget 2007 by PAN. You can read more on MIN from http://www.amfiindia.com/
Malayalam version of this article appeared in Business Manorama dated January 01, 2007