Hello fellow investors
More than 6 months into lockdown, 1 market crash and 1 great recovery, the only constant thing is our learning and our Thursday emails. We started writing our emails soon after lockdown and now we enjoy it so much that we cannot wait for the next Thursday to come and share some insights from the finance world with you.
In today's email, I am going back to the basics of Mutual Funds and explain what exactly are Mutual Fund Units and NAV and how they help or not help you make investment decisions.
What is a Mutual Fund Unit?
Just as share represent the ownership of Equity, units represent the ownership of Mutual funds. When you invest 5000 INR in a mutual fund and the NAV of the fund is 50 INR - you would get 100 units.
It is like buying petrol when you go to the petrol pump, you ask them to fille petrol in your car for 1000 INR. If the price per litre is INR 100, you would get 10 litres of petrol in your car.
Let's understand a few facts about Units of Mutual Funds
1. You don't need to buy 1 entire unit of Mutual Fund
You can buy a mutual fund in fractions or parts, it is the amount of money you invest that determines how many units you get. Like when you fill petrol in your car, you tell them fille petrol of INR 1000, if per litre petrol price is 72, you get 13.88 litres of petrol. The same thing happens with Mutual Funds.
2. You do not sell all your units to withdraw from Mutual Funds.
As you can partially invest in mutual funds, you can also partially withdraw from mutual funds. You can do that anytime you want (unless they are close-ended schemes)
3. Units are not the same as the share price
Equity Mutual Funds invests in Equity stocks/shares but it does not mean that units are the same thing. The share price is of an individual company and the demand and supply of that particular stock are one of the factors of their share price movements. Such does not happen to mutual fund units.
An average of all the underlying stocks of the mutual funds helps determine the value of each unit which is called as Net Asset Value - NAV.
4. NAV is the price of each unit
The price of each unit of a mutual fund is the NAV. If you want to buy 1 unit of a mutual fund, the price you have to pay is the NAV of that mutual fund’s unit on that day.NAV changes every day. So when the NAV goes up, you gain.
A high NAV does not mean that a particular Mutual Fund is better than the one with a low NAV. NAV price does not determine the value of the Mutual Fund.
NAV= (Total market value of assets invested by the fund-Expenses)/No of Units
5. Mutual fund unit price (NAV) goes up and down
As NAV is determined based on the total market value of the assets invested in by mutual fund which includes shares, bonds, cash, any interest or dividend earned by them and would also capture the movement in the price of shares & bonds, the NAV would also move.
NAV of a fund changes every day where there is a change in the underlying asset, this change helps you know if you are in profit or loss.
Mutual Funds are considered one of the most common forms of investing today, in fact it has generated a lot of wealth for investors who have understood the risk of investing in them and managed it appropriately. We will soon be launching a course on Mutual Funds and more, so stay tuned and keep reading our emailers for a detailed update on the same super soon.
Disclaimer: - The articles are for information purposes only. Information presented is general information that does not take into account your individual circumstances, financial situation, or needs, nor does it present a personalized recommendation to you. You must consult a financial advisor who understands your specific circumstances and situation before taking an investment decision.