Top Five Equity Linked Saving Schmes (ELSS) which also save Tax

Rajesh Soni takes a look at the top 5 tax saving Mutual Funds for the purpose of claiming tax benefits under Sec. 80C of Income Tax Act. He has analysed them on their returns as well as the risk profile (standard deviation)

The top five based on return and risk profile is as under:

1.SBI Magnum Tax Gain

2.HDFC Long term advantage Fund

3.HDFC Tax Saver

4.Birla Equity

5.Franklin India Tax Shield

Value of Net Asset Value of a Mutual Fund

A number of people think that the unit price of a mutual fund matters when they purchase; i.e. that a cheaper unit price is better. Why? They say that they will get more units for the same money, and isn’t that better? Deepak Shenoy shatters this myth in his blog.

The “Number of units” does not matter at all. It is all about gain percentages. The best funds have gained some 750% in five years. What does that mean? That means if you bought that fund at Rs. 10 in 2001 its NAV will now be Rs.75 .

If you bought it at Rs. 20, NAV will be Rs. 150. There are lots of such funds whose NAV is greater than 100 or 150 because they have performed very well. What’s the NAV?

The total NAV, or “Net Asset Value” is a simple concept – First you get the “Net Assets”, which is the sum total of all the assets minus any liabilities of the fund. Meaning, add the current market value of all the shares, minus any open redemption requests and any applicable charges (like Daily fund management fee etc.) and you get the Net Assets. Divide the Net Assets figure by the total number of outstanding units and you get the unit price (called the “NAV Unit Price” or simply, the NAV).

Most web sites and newspapers call the unit price “NAV”. It’s actually the NAV unit price, so the phrase is confusing. Let me not confuse you any further: I will call the total assets as the “Net Assets” and unit price as the “NAV”.

Now you might think, if you have a 10,000 rupees, is it better to buy 1,000 units of one fund quoting at Rs. 10 NAV, or 100 or those quoting at hundred? Frankly it’s dependent on how the fund performs. If the second fund grows at 20%, your units are worth Rs. 12,000 at an NAV of Rs. 120. If the first one grows at 10%, your units are worth Rs. 11,000 at Rs. 11 NAV.

What is better? Obviously the second one, but over here the NAVs are still Rs 11 vs. Rs. 120! Lesser number of units is like small change

But what if you have a 1000 Rs. NAV? That’s a problem, you think; if you want 2,500 rupees, you have to sell three units! That means you take out more than you want, right? Also what if you have 1200 rupees to invest? You can only buy one unit, right?

Wrong. In Mutual funds you also get “fractional” units. So if you invest Rs. 1000 in HDFC Taxsaver, whose nav is Rs. 149.44, you will get 6.692 units. (Some funds even go to fourth decimal) You can then sell fractional units also, like 1.212 units etc! Growth is important, not unit price.

What you care about is how much your money grows, not the number of units you have. It is just as difficult for a Rs. 10 fund to move to Rs. 12, as it is for a Rs. 50 fund to move to Rs. 60.

Why should we invest in Mutual Funds?

Investing in the equity market directly is exciting and glamorous. You are in the thick of things and are able to take responsibility for yourself. Though the volatility and the information overload makes it a daunting task. The present subprime quagmire makes it even more daunting.

How about investing through Mutual funds? Doesn’t it have its own loading and administrative charges and the fund managers making merry on your hard earned money? And can’t we see the best performing mutual funds and follow their portfolio? The performance of a scheme is reflected in its net asset value (NAV) which is disclosed on daily basis in case of open-ended schemes and on weekly basis in case of close-ended schemes. NAV of mutual funds are required to be published in newspapers.

Here are some points to ponder:

•We should allocate our time to investment decisions in proportion to our income generation goals.

•Convenience and hassle free investing should be a major factor.

•Fund managers are into it full time. If we able to identify fund managers who have consistently performed over last 3-5 years, nothing like it.

•The fund manager also has the muscle power of crores of Rupees and is able to take entry and exit decisions impartially.

•MFs continuosly churn their portfolio. When MFs buy and sell stocks, they don’t have to pay capital gains as you do when you churn.

•We are likely to panic over market crashes. MFs can take advantage of a crash!

•With Systematic Investment plans (SIP), you can start investing with as low as Rs 500 per month.

The NAVs are also available on the web sites of mutual funds. All mutual funds are also required to put their NAVs on the web site of Association of Mutual Funds in India (AMFI) www.amfiindia.com and thus the investors can access NAVs of all mutual funds at one place.

The mutual funds are also required to publish their performance in the form of half-yearly results which also include their returns/yields over a period of time i.e. last six months, 1 year, 3 years, 5 years and since inception of schemes.

Investors can also look into other details like percentage of expenses of total assets as these have an affect on the yield and other useful information in the same half-yearly format. The mutual funds are also required to send annual report or abridged annual report to the unitholders at the end of the year.

Various studies on mutual fund schemes including yields of different schemes are being published by the financial newspapers on a weekly basis.

Apart from these, many research agencies also publish research reports on performance of mutual funds including the ranking of various schemes in terms of their performance. Investors should study these reports and keep themselves informed about the performance of various schemes of different mutual funds.

Investors can compare the performance of their schemes with those of other mutual funds under the same category. They can also compare the performance of equity oriented schemes with the benchmarks like BSE Sensitive Index, S&P CNX Nifty, etc. On the basis of performance of the mutual funds, the investors should decide when to enter or exit from a mutual fund scheme.