Dear Khilji,
The first and foremost thing to do is reduce the no. of funds from 33 to more manageble 8 to 10 funds. One way to do this is if you have 3-4 funds from the same fund house, switch to better performing one or two large cap oriented funds. for instance, you have HDFC growth and Top 200. Both are similar though Growth is doing slightly better. since you have lost a substantial amount in the funds, you might be thinking of recovering the losses but then the recovery is going to take sometime and in the mean time you can cocentrate on pruning your portfolio.
Have you checked the recent performance of some of the Gilt funds? May be you can invest some or part of your redeemed funds to Gilt funds. Check it out on VROL.
Regards,
Wadia ...

Dear Dragonbhat,
Your last paragraph makes me wonder if you or any SIP investor has suddenly lost his job or whatever he is doing to earn the monthly income and has no money to further invest in SIP.
My dear, An SIP is a long-long term plan and one invests systematically and gradually to even out the ups and downs. If one is looking for a bottom, that is akin to market timing. SIP nullifies the greed and fear psychosis of an investor.
I would like to share one of my client`s emotional investing decisions. He has a couple of investments in MF online and a few SIPs with a broker. He intended to continue investing online just like an SIP but have completely stopped investing and started redeeming at a loss ever since beginning of this year but his SIPs are still continuing that were done through the broker. The reason for this he tells me is in such volatile market, I am unable to carry on investing online as the fear of loosing is too strong to commit any money, and watching the indices plummeting made him redeem at a loss. In fact his decision of not investing is loosing him the opportunity of buying at such low levels. I asked him that in that case why did you not stop the SIPs? His answer was the broker advised him not to and convinced him to continue as he is getting more units at lower NAV and when markets will turn for the better, he will earn more.
Regards,
Wadia...

Dear NRIs,
I went to ICICI Rep. office here in Dubai to enquire whether it is possible to do anything about the 30% TDS deduction on interest income and was pleasantly surprised by the Rep. informing me that the banks are in talks with Government to reduce this heavy tax burden on us and bring it down to 12%. I dont know if this is really true and if yes when would it take effect. even the Rep. had no idea about the time frame for this. I request other NRIs to check with their banks and see what response they are getting.
Regards,
Wadia ...

Dear Dr Sundep,
The easiest way to book profits is to select dividend payout option. Let the fund manager decide when to book profit. Coming to your second question of what to do with profit booking. Well, the dividend declaration is at the highest when markets are on the rise and so is the NAV(You can see that all dividends in MF have almost dried up due to market decline). This will surely disturb your asset allocation. Invest the profits in the asset class that has come down to bring back your prefered asset allocation; i.e. buy more of debt, FD or gold from the profits to balance your portfolio.
Hope this will Help.
Regards,
Wadia...

Dear akar,
In an ordinary debt fund, the fund manager actively mixes debt instruments from varying issuers maturing at different points in time to deliver higher returns than will be possible by passively holding a debt instrument.
A gilt fund restricts itself to debt securities issued by the government. In theory, a gilt fund should offer lower returns and carry a lower level of risk, relative to an ordinary debt fund.
This is because a gilt fund faces negligible risk of the borrower (in this case, the government) defaulting on an obligation. But, in practice, in recent times, gilt funds have offered higher returns and have been subject to greater swings in their NAV, than pure debt funds. This is mainly because gilts are more responsive to changes in interest rates than corporate bonds.
Liquid and money market funds both invest in ultra-safe, very short-term debt instruments which can be liquidated at short notice.
Money-market funds usually invest in call money, T-bills and very short-term instruments. But a liquid fund may also invest in short-term debt issues from companies. Therefore, a liquid fund may have a marginally higher-risk profile and hold investments for a slightly longer period than a money market fund. Even so, the average age of the securities in a liquid fund is usually less than three months.
Apart from these products, fund houses also offer treasury management plans, cash funds and short-term plans, all of which do a pretty good job of capital preservation. But these products usually cater to market-savvy institutional investors and have a high entry bar.
In liquid and money-market funds, returns are likely to accrue steadily over the holding period, rather than in fits and starts. What is more, given the very short maturity profile of the portfolio, the risk of erosion in your investment due to interest rate movements, is negligible. There is also negligible risk of a dent to the NAV due to borrower default, as these funds usually stick to top-notch instruments.
The risk with bond and gilt funds is that, over a short holding period, the NAV can be quite volatile. Bond and gilt funds may even turn in negative returns over short time periods such as a quarter.

Regards,
Wadia
...

Dear msrao,
ICICI Pru Gilt investment fund is one of the better funds. There is no entry or exit load and minimum investment is Rs. 25000/- Fund risk grade is above average and return grade is high. It has given 1 year return of 17% and 3 years 10% annualised. TDS is same as other debt funds.
Regards,
Wadia...

if we choose the mutual fund scheme which is well performed in the bearmarket. every fund is well performed in the bull market.but the best fund is one whcih is well performed in the bearmarket also. how is select a good? here is some parameters to choose a good fund.it will help you. 1. standard deviation. 2. beeta 3. r square 4. sharp ratio 5. sortino ratio 6. treynor ratio 7. jenson`s alpha. in addttion to these the fund size, the fund manger`s performance. if the s.d is greater value then the risk is greater and it indicates the volatality of the fund. beeta would indicates the volatality against the bench mark index. if beeta is greater than 1 means the fund is more volatile than bench mark index. r square is describes the level of association between funds volatality and market risk. high high sharp ratio indicates lower risk and lower sharp ratio indicates higher risk. sortino ratio considers only the down side volatality. treynor is grater value indicates the better the funds performance. positive alpha suggest strong performance and negative alpha suggest weak performance. see all these parameters and choose a good fund. don`t depend on others to choose a fund. take your own decession.o.k bye., dsvas...

Is it worth continuing SIP of my 3.5% of asset allocation in MF? My idea behind the investiment is to have a Global exposure in my portfolio. If it`s not worth, where do you suggest redirecting this % of investment. My other allocations are Large Cap - 68% (HDFC Top 200, DSP BR Top 100, Sundaram Select Focus) Mid Cap - 12% (Rel. Growth) Sectoral - 4.5% (ICICI Infra) Debt - 12% (Kotak Flexi Debt) Thanks Anand...

Can anyone give the difference between Debt, Liquid and Gilt funds? Within each category, again there are long, short, plus, institutional etc., I tried doing the homework before posting the query, but got lost. Appreciate the explain the difference and when to choose which fund? Thanks akar...