Disadvantages of mutual funds

Mutual funds are good investment vehicles to navigate the complex and unpredictable world of investments. However, even mutual funds have some inherent drawbacks. Understand these before you commit your money to a mutual fund.
1. No assured returns and no protection of capital
If you are planning to go with a mutual fund, this must be your mantra: mutual funds do not offer assured returns and carry risk. For instance, unlike bank deposits, your investment in a mutual fund can fall in value. In addition, mutual funds are not insured or guaranteed by any government body (unlike a bank deposit, where up to Rs 1 lakh per bank is insured by the Deposit and Credit Insurance Corporation, a subsidiary of the Reserve Bank of India). There are strict norms for any fund that assures returns and it is now compulsory for funds to establish that they have resources to back such assurances. This is because most closed-end funds that assured returns in the early-nineties failed to stick to their assurances made at the time of launch, resulting in losses to investors. A scheme cannot make any guarantee of return, without stating the name of the guarantor, and disclosing the net worth of the guarantor. The past performance of the assured return schemes should also be given.
2. Restrictive gains
Diversification helps, if risk minimisation is your objective. However, the lack of investment focus also means you gain less than if you had invested directly in a single security.
Assume, Reliance appreciated 50 per cent. A direct investment in the stock would appreciate by 50 per cent. But your investment in the mutual fund, which had invested 10 per cent of its corpus in Reliance, will see only a 5 per cent appreciation.
3. Taxes
During a typical year, most actively managed mutual funds sell anywhere from 20 to 70 percent of the securities in their portfolios. If your fund makes a profit on its sales, you will pay taxes on the income you receive, even if you reinvest the money you made.
4. Management risk
When you invest in a mutual fund, you depend on the fund’s manager to make the right decisions regarding the fund’s portfolio. If the manager does not perform as well as you had hoped, you might not make as much money on your investment as you expected. Of course, if you invest in Index Funds, you forego management risk, because these funds do not employ managers.