Mutual Funds, when defined simply are a pool of funds by investors who wish to park their money and grow it in a certain span of time.  Now financial goals can be different and so could be the time and risk taking ability.  Thus, mutual funds have different types and classifications.  So amongst the different types of mutual funds there are stocks, bonds and money market funds.  Now each of these different types of funds have a different risk and reward ratio and should fit your style.  However, they say in general that “higher the potential return, higher is the risk”, which is quite similar to what we all know, “no risk, no gain”.

Now when trying to manage your mutual funds, there are no hard and fast rules or tips, but to mindfully choose your funds and do a realistic assessment of your funds, risk taking ability, time span you wish to invest your money into funds, your financial goals and expectations from the fund performance.  Also, you must be highly aware and should be closely monitoring the market for your funds performances.

investing plans by Wirawat Lian-udom, on Flickr.  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Now all of this can be managed by some on their own, while for the others it would be best to seek help of experts who are qualified professionals called Fund or Money Managers.  They with their expert knowledge can help to diversify your funds, so that you don’t put your money in no one category or type, because not always do all categories perform well.  And while you depend and trust your money managers for all their financial advice, it would be wise that you keep a track on market and fund performances as well.

Amongst the 3 broad types of funds, i.e. Stocks also Equity Funds, Bonds also Income Funds and Money Market Funds there are several further classifications that lets you choose from open-ended, closed-ended, sector and term specific funds, different capital size, tax saving and index funds, etc. These categories and schemes however vary from one top mutual funds management company to the other.

So, the best mutual fund tip is to make an informed and well calculated choice for your investments and manage them wisely.