Can new investors invest in a closed mutual fund?
A
There are several specific reasons investors turn to mutual funds instead of managing their own portfolio directly. The primary reasons why an individual may choose to buy mutual funds instead of individual stocks are diversification, convenience, and lower costs.
Who should invest in a Closed Ended Mutual Fund? Closed ended funds require lumpsum investment and do not offer a redemption option until maturity. Hence, investors with an investible corpus and an investment horizon in sync with the maturity date of the scheme can opt for closed ended mutual funds.
Closed-end funds (“CEFs”) can play an important role in a diversified portfolio as they may offer investors the potential for generating capital growth and income through investment performance and distributions.
If a mutual fund scheme winds up or closes, the assets of the scheme are liquidated. Following this, the proceeds are distributed to the unit holders in proportion to their holdings, based on the prevailing Net Asset Value (NAV) after deducting the relevant expenses.
A closed-end fund is a type of mutual fund that issues a fixed number of shares through one initial public offering (IPO) to raise capital for its initial investments. Its shares can then be bought and sold on a stock exchange, but no new shares will be created, and no new money will flow into the fund.
However, mutual funds are considered a bad investment when investors consider certain negative factors to be important, such as high expense ratios charged by the fund, various hidden front-end, and back-end load charges, lack of control over investment decisions, and diluted returns.
While mutual funds offer potential benefits, investors also face risks like market fluctuations. Market risk is a primary concern as the value of securities can go up or down based on changes in market conditions.
Low costs. Because a mutual fund buys and sells large amounts of securities at a time, its transaction costs are typically lower than what you would pay as an individual investor.
Cons of closed-end funds
A closed-end fund's liquidity depends on investor supply and demand, so it can be less liquid than an open-end fund. These funds are also subject to increased volatility because shares can trade above or below their NAV. Another potential drawback is that many closed-end funds use leverage.
What are the risks of a closed-end mutual fund?
Valuation Risk: The market price of a CEF at any point in time is likely to vary from the fund's NAV. The size of any price premium and/or discount could have a significant impact on an investor's return over time.
Closed-end funds that return capital can carry a higher level of risk because the fund is eroding the asset base available to generate income to pay distributions. Some closed-end funds set a specific distribution rate to pay regardless of the income generated by the fund.
There's no real consensus among investors about why discounts or premiums to the underlying assets in these funds exist. Part of the reason may be that closed-end funds are smaller, and thus less liquid, than more widely used products like ETFs and mutual funds. They are also less transparent.
"Closed to new investors" is a term that means a fund has decided to stop allowing new investments from any investors who are not already invested in the fund. Mutual funds and hedge funds may choose to close to new investors for various reasons such as excessive inflows or to maintain exclusivity.
When rates rise, the portfolio team can trade to acquire bonds with higher coupons. The leverage team may seek to lock in lower leverage costs through interest rate swaps; this is more typical in taxable funds.
Typically, market risk results in greater fluctuations in the net asset value (NAV) when the remaining maturity of a portfolio security is longer. Equity Closed-End Funds: The vulnerability of seeing a decline in their NAV and market price is a shared risk among all equity closed-end funds.
A closed-end fund has a fixed number of shares offered by an investment company through an initial public offering. Open-end funds (which most of us think of when we think mutual funds) are offered through a fund company that sells shares directly to investors.
The biggest reason why a mutual fund company will decide to close its fund's doors is that the fund's strategy is being threatened by the fund's size. The decision to close a fund's doors to new investors could be to protect existing shareholders from stagnant or declining fund performance.
Benefits of close-ended funds
Stability: As investors cannot redeem their units before maturity, as with open-ended schemes, close-ended funds are stable in terms of their asset valuation.
Generally, equity funds are known to inherently carry the highest risk, followed by hybrid funds and, finally, debt funds. There can be variations in risk levels within the category of equity funds, too.
Can you redeem a closed-end fund?
A closed-end fund generally is not required to buy its shares back from investors upon request. That is, closed-end fund shares generally are not redeemable. In addition, they are allowed to hold a greater percentage of illiquid securities in their investment portfolios than mutual funds are.
There are very few negative of SIP which are ignorable: Date of investment is fixed and you cannot even manipulate it by one or two days. Your average entry date is delayed. Each installment of sip have different entry price, so calculating return is tough.
So while it's certainly not a bad thing to own some mutual funds, you may not want to only invest your 401(k) in mutual funds. Instead, you may want to put some of your money into index funds, since those tend to come with substantially lower fees.
Potential Cons
Mutual funds have expenses, typically ranging between 0.50% to 1%, which pay for management and other costs to operate the fund. Some mutual funds have sales charges, or "loads," that investors pay when either buying or selling a mutual fund. Market risk.
Different types of risk are usually measured by calculating the standard deviation, a statistical measurement of volatility based on the historical returns or average returns of a specific investment. A high standard deviation indicates a high degree of risk.
