Sunday, September 7, 2008

Daily SIP for Indian Mutual Funds

India is undoubtedly one of the best places to invest money. Needless to say, there has been a recent uptrend in the number of fund houses starting their operations as well as the money flowing into mutual funds besides the increase in the number of investors themselves.

To be on the safe side, most investors opt for SIP or Systematic Investment Plan. This is an ideal mode of investment for investors who have a regular flow of money (say salaried people) who can be sure that by a given specific date, they are sure of having their money (salary) in their bank account. A simple instruction to the fund house and the bank will help them invest regularly on a given time and hence stay away from the uptrend or the downtrend of the markets.

One catch with the SIP plans is that none of the 30+ strong Indian mutual fund houses have a SIP that invests money on a daily basis. There are two options available now, of course.

The first is from the ING Vysya Mutual Fund who launched a feature called ING Zoom Investment Pac (ZIP) in which a lump sum money is invested in one of their ING Vysya Liquid Fund and then money is transferred to one of their allowed equity schemes. Though this is not exactly a Daily SIP per se considering that the investor has put in his money at a single go (into the liquid fund), it serves the purpose to a certain extent by allowing the investor to invest on a daily basis in the equities. The actual money put in the Liquid fund will be safe considering debt and related instruments are safer than equities.

The latest Daily SIP facility is from Bharti AXA Mutual Fund. Investors may be recall Bharti AXA has come up with a new fund scheme called the Bharti AXA Equity Fund (NFO Period: September 4, 2008 to October 1, 2008; Scheme re-opens for continues sale and re-purchase from October 29, 2008). Bharti AXA is offering Daily SIP for investors in this fund who are having a bank account with HDFC Bank, Axis Bank or with Bank of Baroda (Core banking branches). Bharti AXA seems to be planning to expand this offering to other banks too. So, if you have an account with any of these banks and would like to do a Daily SIP Investment, Bharti AXA Equity Fund is the only fund available for the investors at the moment.

The minimum SIP amount for a Daily SIP is Rs. 300 (per day). The minimum period is for 6 months. Hence the SIP amount for the 6 month period works out to Rs. 300 day x 6 months x 25 days (considering we will have 25 trading days in a month on an average) = Rs. 45000.

This option is also a good choice for an investor who wishes to do a SIP for more than Rs. 7500 a month. Instead of investing at Rs. 7500 on a single investment, it would be good to go for a Daily SIP (Rs. 300 per day x 25 trading days per month (approx) = Rs. 7500)

Daily SIP offers rupee cost averaging on a daily basis and hence is considered as a good choice for investors who want to invest their money on a daily basis and yet put their investment decisions in the hands of experts.

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