What is Investment?

Financial independence is a milestone that each of us should aim for. But achieving it comes with numerous responsibilities. You need to manage your own as well as your family’s expenses. For this reason, it’s important to invest your money to meet your future monetary objectives. It might be a slow journey if you depend on your savings alone.

Saving is just keeping the funds idle in your bank account. But why not put them to work and allow your funds to grow over time? For that, you must understand what investment means and how allocating your money to various financial tools can help you achieve your financial goals. Also, find out how different types of investment ensures present and future financial security.

How Does The Investment Work?

Investing simply means setting aside some money to grow while you go on to do your daily tasks. Warren Buffet, one of the most successful investors, defines investment as the process of laying out your money in the expectation of receiving high returns in the future.

The best investment plan with high returns can help multiply your money in an exponential manner. But make sure to assess your risk profile and market conditions before investing. You can not only create a significant corpus but also receive a regular income by investing in the best investment plan for monthly income.

All in all, investing is the act of leveraging your funds for a potential gain in the future, and it may entail some risk.

Types of Investments In India

Different types of investment tools come with different risks and returns. Each of them has a specific set of features and ways in which they can be used.

Here are some of the best investment options available.

Direct Equity

“Direct equity” equates to investing directly in the stock market. You will normally need to achieve this by opening a demat and trading account and making market in different types of investments through a stock broker. Once done, you can purchase stock directly from corporations on the stock market.

Mutual Funds

Mutual funds can be a good choice for people who are looking to diversify their portfolios. Let us talk about how mutual funds work—Investments from different individuals are pooled and are used to buy market-linked securities. The funds are managed by financial experts. They aim to gain maximize the investor’s returns.

Fixed Deposits

A fixed deposit is a type of investment scheme where a fixed rate of interest is paid on the initial amount over a pre-determined period of time. At the end of the investment tenure, you receive your principal amount along with interest earned. The FD interest rates may vary from bank to bank. It is a good idea to compare different types of investment options to get a clear understanding.

Public Provident Fund

PPF or Public Provident Fund was introduced by the government of India in 1968 to help mobilize small savings in the form of investment among the masses. You can invest in a PPF account if you are looking for a safe option that offers guaranteed returns. The PPF interest rates are declared by the government on a quarterly basis.

Employee Provident Fund

Employees Provident Fund or EPF is a retirement benefits scheme that comes under the Employees Provident Funds and Miscellaneous Provisions Act, 1952. Companies with a strength of more than 20 people mandatorily get covered by the EPF scheme.

National Pension System

National Pension Scheme or NPS is a government-sponsored scheme that locks up your money till the investor reaches their retirement age. The funds collected are invested in stocks, bonds, and government securities. It can be the perfect type of investment option if you want to secure money for old age. To better understand this scheme, you can use an online tool for calculating NPS returns.

Stocks

Investing in stocks means investing in the share market. You basically buy a share of ownership in a public company. This financial instrument has immense potential for growth over the long term. If you are willing to invest for a long time, you may be rewarded with high positive returns.

Bonds

Bonds are the fixed income instruments used by governments or companies in order to raise money by borrowing from individuals. A bond is generally issued to raise capital for specific projects. In return, the investor is promised a payback with interest over a fixed period.

Gold

For Indians, gold has always been a go-to asset or investment. Additionally, it is a resource with high emotional and social worth. In India, purchasing gold coins, bars, cookies, and jewelry on auspicious days has long been custom. A possession with such emotional worth has also gained popularity in many forms. For instance, gold ETFs and bonds are becoming more popular lately.

Cryptocurrencies

A cryptocurrency is a type of digital or virtual currency that uses encryption to protect it from counterfeiting or duplicate spending. Blockchain technology, a distributed ledger enforced by a dispersed network of computers, is the foundation of many cryptocurrency decentralized networks. The fact that cryptocurrencies are often not issued by any central authority makes them potentially impervious to intervention from or manipulation by governments.

Exchange-Trade-Funds (ETFs)

A pooled investment security called an exchange-traded fund (ETF) functions very similarly to a mutual fund. ETFs often follow a certain sector, index, commodity, or other asset, but unlike mutual funds, they can be bought or sold on a stock exchange just like conventional stocks. Anything from the price of a single commodity to a sizable and varied group of securities can be tracked by an ETF. ETFs may even be designed to follow different types of investment strategies.

Index Funds

Index Fund is a method of investing in the stock market that is passive. It follows the benchmark index and is additionally known as index-tracked mutual funds. Each stock included in the index is given some weight in the fund’s portfolio. Due to their minimal operating costs and passive management, these funds have the potential to provide investors with better returns.

Real Estate

Real estate has become a popular type of investment tool over the past few decades. It is an asset class that should be a part of everyone’s diversified portfolio. Real estate investing can be profitable if the investor becomes the landlord of a rental property. This option can lead to a passive income, tax advantages, and a regular cash flow.

Did You Know?

The Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), the oldest exchange in Asia, was established at Dalal Street in 1854 by Premchand Roychand. BSE is the largest stock exchange in the world in terms of the total number of listed firms because it includes over 5000 companies.

Inflation And Investment: Is There A Connection?

A widespread, ongoing tendency of rising prices from one year to the next is known as inflation. The rate of inflation is a crucial economic concept because it illustrates the rate at which an investment loses real value over time as well as the decline in expenditure or purchasing power. Additionally, inflation provides investors with the precise percentage return that their investments must yield in order to preserve their quality of life.

Investing Tips/How To Start Investing?

Various factors depend on how would you want to invest in the future. Let’s have a look at some of them:

• Understand your long-term financial goals
• Try and invest as early as possible
• Invest in plans that are defined for a longer-term
• Consider equities as well
• Try ignore every opinion of the market

Things To Keep In Mind While Investing

Here are a few points you can keep in mind before investing:

• Fully investigate businesses to learn what they do, where they do it, and how.
• Look at the company’s price-to-earnings ratio, which compares the share price to earnings per share.
• You can find out how risky a stock is by looking at a company’s beta in relation to the rest of the market.
• Invest in equities with a high yield if you want to put your cash in a safe place.
• Despite the difficulty of interpreting charts, try to find some of the simplest cues, such as changes in the stock’s price.

Investment Objective

When you invest, you basically give your money a ‘job’ to do, which is to make you wealthier over time. It involves purchasing and acquiring assets in the hope of generating income in the future. Investment is a means of investing for the future. This may include stocks, bonds, real estate and government-sponsored schemes. So, the investment meaning comes down to putting your hard-earned money into profitable assets that grow in value and produce a sizeable corpus in the future.

Investment Horizon

The phrase “investment horizon” refers to the overall period of time over which an investor anticipates holding securities or a portfolio. Investment perspectives can be short-term, lasting only a few days, or very long-term, possibly lasting decades.

Risk

When it comes to investing, there may be some level of risk involved. Risk is a key factor you must take into consideration. Most investors usually prefer investments will lesser risks as they are more lucrative. However, investing in high-risk investments can lead to higher returns.

Let us go through some of the key things you need to consider to make an informed decision while investing: –

• Make your personal financial roadmap: Take a look at your financial situation and figure out your goals and risk-taking capacity.
• Diversify Your Investment: By investing in different assets with varying risks, you can create a balance between risk and returns. Allocating funds to more than one category of assets can help reduce the risk of losing money.
• Maintain an Emergency Fund: Smart investors put adequate money in financial instruments to cover a sudden emergency.

If you are looking to invest in the long term, you are likely to gain higher returns by carefully allocating your funds to profitable assets. In the case of short-term investments, putting money in low-risk instruments can help fulfil monetary objectives in the near future.

Returns

A common profitability statistic used to assess how well an investment has done is return on investment (ROI). By dividing an investment’s net profit (or loss) by its initial cost or outlay, ROI is expressed as a percentage. ROI can be used to rate investments in various projects or assets and create apples-to-apples comparisons. ROI does not account for time passing or the holding duration, which means it may not account for the opportunity costs of investing elsewhere. If there are other opportunities accessible, it is important to analyze whether or not anything provides a decent ROI.

Cost And Expense

Real costs are associated with investing, which lower any potential returns. Smart investors understand how to reduce type of investment expenses in order to increase their profits. Expense ratios, market costs, custodian fees, advisory fees, commissions, and loads are typical investment expenses. According to research, funds with fewer costs typically produce higher returns than funds with higher costs. Knowing when to acquire and hold investments, comprehending tax consequences, and choosing tax-exempt or tax-deferred investments are all ways to cut investment costs.

Liquidity

In a secondary market, liquidity generally refers to how fast or easily a security can be acquired or sold. When cash is needed, liquid investments can be easily sold without incurring a large cost. The ease with which shares of a stock can be bought or sold without significantly affecting the stock price is referred to as the stock’s liquidity. Stocks with low liquidity may be challenging to sell, which could result in you suffering a greater loss if you are unable to do so when you need to.

Lock-in Period

The term “lock in period” describes the period of time during which an investment or the money invested cannot be sold, redeemed, or withdrew. A fund’s or investment’s lock in term is not the same as its investment duration. The investment duration may exceed the lock-in term. In private equity IPOs, hedge funds, some mutual funds, etc., lock in periods are typical. Investors shouldn’t hold off on making withdrawals until the end of the lock-in period. At the conclusion of the lock-in period, they must assess the fund’s performance and determine whether to keep the monies invested or redeem them.

Taxation

Bonds and other fixed income investments like them can be listed or unlisted, and this has an effect on the tax laws that apply to the investment. Debentures, government securities, corporate bonds, tax-free bonds, etc. are a few examples of listed debt instruments. When it comes to listed debt instruments, LTCG is applicable if the holding duration is longer than 12 months, and STCG is applicable if it is shorter. The STCG rate for these investments is determined by the investor’s income tax slab rate. The LTCG tax rate ranges from 10% without indexation to 20% with indexation.

The indexation benefit, however, is only applicable to a small number of listed debt instruments, such as the capital-indexed bonds issued by the Indian government and the sovereign gold bonds issued by the Reserve Bank of India. The threshold holding period of 36 months is applied when determining short- or long-term capital gains on unlisted bonds and debentures. In this instance, the investor’s income tax bracket determines the STCG tax rate. For unlisted debt securities, the LTCG tax rate is 20% without indexation.

Which Investment Option Is Best For You?

There are several types of investment options when it comes to best investment options to choose from. To name a few, we have:

• Bonds
• Stock
• Gold
• National Pension System
• Cryptocurrency
• Real estate

Key Takeaways

• Making an investment entails using money now in the hopes that it will appreciate later.
• An investment is putting capital to use, such as time, money, effort, etc., with the hope of receiving a larger return than what was initially invested.
• Bonds, equities, real estate, company assets and other means of earning future income are just a few examples of what are referred to as investments.

Word To Remember

Mortgage:

Mortgages are a sort of loan that can be used to buy or keep up a house, land or other piece of real estate. The borrower agrees to make periodic payments to the lender, usually in the form of a series of regular instalments that are split into principal and interest. The property then acts as security for the loan.

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