Data shows that over periods of 5, 10, or 15 years and longer, returns from equity mutual funds have consistently beaten inflation. This is important for long term wealth creation. However, in the short term, returns from equity can be...

The question is whether this is a rational expectation. Can the investor hope to have such expectations in the future?

Here are three things they need to watch out for if they are investing without the help of a financial advisor or are not yet well versed with investing.

For those who were choosing the dividend option in debt funds and are subject to the 10% or 20% income tax rate, it is now more suitable for them to pick the growth option and pay short term capital gains tax if they redeem before 3 years or long-term capital gains tax with indexation on redeeming after 3 years.

A few weeks back, investor Thiyagarajan Chandrasekaran posted on a popular financial portal ‘there is no dividend for the month of December-18 and February-19’. Thiyagarajan had put his hard-earned money in a top-rated balanced scheme of a mutual fund and was surprised to know that monthly dividends were not guaranteed.

Many people have a number in their heads which makes up their dream corpus but rarely do they consider if this dream corpus will actually allow them to maintain their lifestyle, years later.

Financial experts (and Google) list “mutual funds” as the best investment option. But you’d like to know more? Here’s a one-stop read to get all your questions about mutual funds answered!

I am writing this, as I have made several mistakes over all these years as an investor. If not for some of these mistakes, I would be far better off today and much wealthier.