Pune Investment Financial Advisors Association (PIFAA) organized an investor awareness program called ‘Smart Money Manager’ which was attended by around 1,100 people including AMC officials, claim PIFAA officials.
Addressing the gathering, K.S. Rao, Head - Investor Awareness and Distribution Development, Birla Sun Life AMC emphasized the need to invest through SIP. With the help of interesting audio visuals, he underlined the importance of long term systematic investment. Don’t go for tips, use SIP, was his message to the audience.
Sharing the importance of investing in equities, Krishan Sharma, Business Development & Training, HDFC Mutual spoke on the topic ‘God and government invest in equity, why not you?’ Krishan explained the difficult concepts of economics using slice-of-life analogies. “With the growth in population, especially the younger generation, there will be an increase in demand in the economy. This increasing consumption demand has to be met with supply from the industries. This helps the gross domestic product (GDP) to grow. With the growth in GDP, the money has to come in share markets,” said Kishan.
Investors often burn their fingers in markets due to their irrational behaviour. And this is where the role of advisors becomes very critical. A panel comprising Swarup Mohanty Head – Sales Mirae Asset MF, Samant Sikka Head - Business Development Axis MF, Sarath Sarma, ED & Head Sales IDBI MF, Aashish Somaiyaa MD & CEO Motilal Oswal MF, Sunil Subramaniam CEO Sundaram MF and Bharat Pathak of Wealth Managers India deliberated on the topic ‘Navigating Your Wealth.’ The panel stressed on the need of asset allocation and goal based investing. “The panel pointed out the repeated mistakes made by investors and how it is difficult to hold the right stock or the right mutual fund for a long time. The investor would either have a wrong stock or a scheme and hold it for long time or buy good stock or scheme and sell it too soon,” said Bhushan Mahajan, Director, PIFAA.
The event ended with a panel discussion of CIOs and fund managers who spoke on the topic ‘Vision 2020’. The panellists were Gopal Agrawal CIO Mirae Asset MF, V. Balasubramanian Head – Equity IDBI MF, Harsha Upadhyay Head - Equity Kotak MF and Jinesh Gopani Fund Manager- Equity Axis MF. Bhushan Mahajan, Director of PIFAA moderated the panel.
The key takeaway from this session was that despite various global economic challenges, Indian economy will move ahead.
The panel pointed out that since the reforms unleashed by P. V. Narasimha Rao government in 1991, mutual funds have multiplied investor wealth many times. However, retail investors have been largely left out of this wealth creation story either because they sold early or due to their lack of conviction in markets.
The rout in Chinese markets has rattled world markets and many are concerned about its impact on India. Assuaging the concerns of investors, Gopal Agrawal said that investors need to view Chinese economy and the Chinese stock market separately. “China has more than $ 3.8 trillion reserves and the collapse of Chinese economy is an unlikely event. We have to take advantage of the fall in crude and commodity prices and aim for higher GDP growth,” said Gopal.
The panel was unanimous that investors should invest in equity now.