Mutual fund investments are popular due to their diversification and professional approach. Being diverse, people might hold more than one mutual fund portfolio and to help those people, it is necessary to perform periodic assessments of their portfolios for better alignment with the financial goal. In this tutorial, we describe the essential fundamentals and approaches to the analysis and management of your mutual funds so that you always make the right investment decisions.
Why You Should Regularly Evaluate & Review Your Mutual Fund Investment
Like any other form of investment, your long term mutual fund portfolio has its own risks and will be impacted by the prevailing market conditions. Such reviews are necessary because they enable you to have current information regarding the mutual fund’s performance so that your investment targets remain in line with your expectations.
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- Track the risk profile: The stock market is not static – it continuously changes. As a result, asset allocation or risk tolerance may alter. This also means that a poorly performing fund will have to be replaced with a more suitable one.
- Rebalancing: A fund’s allocation to some investments can become skewed or tilted depending on the market movements making the ideal market allocation no longer valid. Relatively short time intervals enable such effective reallocations to be undertaken whenever the need arises.
- Managerial changes: A new investment manager might come with a new investment style that will affect the performance of the fund in question.
For people who are serious about their long term mutual fund portfolio, studying their mutual fund portfolio more than once a year creates maximum gains while only exposing the investor to moderate risk. Such evaluation metrics will allow an investor to manage their long term mutual fund portfolio optimally to achieve their financial goals.
1. Assessing each fund against a benchmark
The very first task in mutual fund portfolio evaluation is to perform cross sectional analysis of each fund’s return to its respective benchmark. A benchmark is usually a stock market index, or a collection of securities within a defined segment of the economy. For mutual funds managers the measure of success for the fund is whether or not the funds return exceeded this benchmark.
- How to measure: Look at the benchmark over a number of time horizons for example 1 year, 3 years and 5 years and compare them to the total return of your fund.
- What to look for: Over the performance of the fund and the benchmark, consistent performance superior to that of the benchmark or the other way around will typically get us closer to the reality of the effectiveness of the fund relative to the market.
2. Review the Expense Ratio
The expense ratio represents the yearly cost charged by the fund in respect of management and administration expenses. Though it may appear a small figure, over time it can greatly diminish your returns on investment if the expense ratio is relatively high.
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- How to evaluate: Analyse the level of your fund expenses as a ratio of median expenses of other funds within that category.
- Key considerations: In most cases, an indexing fund should have a less expense ratio, although certain active funds may justify a heavier load of expenses in cases where the fund performs well relative to its peers.
3. Study The Past of The Mutual Fund Portfolio
The past performance of the long term mutual fund portfolio offers a safe passage as its performance showcases its ability to sustain itself through both cup and handle market phases. How well has your mutual fund portfolio dealt with the markets over the long run is essential and surveying the performance should be one where the stress testing has been frequently applied.
- How to analyse:
- Look at the long-term and short-term trends in the performance of the fund and see how it has been performing across both the rising and falling of the markets.
- Understand if there were any changes in the managerial composition over the time, but try to gauge the net experience and performance of the present fund manager.
- What to look for: Performance has remained constant taking account the strategy and objectives of the fund.
4. Evaluate the strength of the mutual fund portfolio
Depending on how the assets in the pattern of long term mutual fund portfolio, level of returns as well as risk may be evaluated. It’s a known fact that a more diversified portfolio is often most suitable when the market moves in different directions. Attention should be directed towards the following:
- Asset allocation: Familiarise with the way the fund assets are divided across the stocks, bonds and other instruments. Shift on a balanced allocation can help curtail risks.
- Sector exposure: A fund can bet over 2 sectors and additional industries. Narrow fringes in a singular sector may pose an escalated level of risk while expenses on the seeking of a diversified sector distributions can insulate the average fund from shaky seilings.
- Quality of holdings: Go through the financial weakness and growth ability in individual assets making up the mutual fund portfolio.
5. Check Portfolio Turnover Ratio (PTR)
In a given mutual fund, the mutual fund portfolio turnover ratio measures how often the fund manager is buying and selling securities within the fund. High planners can result in more expensive expectable cost transactions, and hence might impact the income the whole.
- How to evaluate: In relation to other funds of its class, how does the long term mutual fund portfolio turnover ratio compare. Some models require a higher turnover ratio, for example active management, but too high can be detrimental. Compare the turnover ratio of your fund to similar funds. Some strategies may justify a higher turnover, such as active management, but excessive trading can hurt long-term performance.
- Considerations: A high PTR could be construed to mean aggressive strategies, which not all investors would be comfortable with.
6. Compare Maturity Period for Debt Funds
It is important to comprehend the mean maturity period in bond-oriented mutual funds. The maturity period has substantial impacts on both interest rate risk as well as yield.
- Interest rate risk: A longer maturity period exposes the fund to higher interest rate risk. But a shorter maturity period is least affected by fluctuations in interest rates.
- Yield potential: Long-term bonds are going to yield better but more risky; short-term is less volatile and a lower return.
- How to pick the debt fund: Try to balance the maturity date of the fund against your investment horizon, as well as your needs for appetite for risk.
7. Understand Risk-Adjusted Returns
Do not be someone who looks, chooses & describes a mutual fund by returns alone. Instead, think in terms of the risk adjusted metrics which measure the funds returns based on the risk undertaken.
- Standard deviation: Measures the volatility of fund returns. The lower the standard deviation of the fund, the lesser is the risk.
- Beta: It measures the sensitivity of the fund to the general market. If the beta of the fund is less than 1, then the volatility is lesser in comparison to the market; but if the beta is more than 1, then it portrays the increased risk.
- Sharpe ratio: It measures the fund’s return after risk adjustment. The more the Sharpe ratio, the better the fund has paid for taking the respective risk for its investors.