Everything about everything

When you have just started investing in mutual funds for a few years, you probably have a very simple portfolio. I know I did. Two or three funds, one of them the obligatory ELSS tax saver, a couple of SIPs - that is about it for most of us initially. There's no 'analysis' needed for such a portfolio. You can just look at the statements you get occasionally, and all the information is right there. Whatever you need to calculate just takes 30 seconds of simple mental arithmetic.

However, as time goes by and your portfolio grows, things can get more complicated. You may add more funds from different fund houses to diversify or target specific types of funds. The number of transactions increases as you deploy more money or just stop and start SIPs. Perhaps you redeem parts of some investments because you need the money. Some SIPs get enhanced. All this happens naturally over five to six years, even if you try to keep things simple. Keeping track of performance, returns, asset allocation, and other parameters has become difficult. Mental arithmetic will not suffice, and if you try to eyeball the numbers, you could reach conclusions that are completely wrong.

Those adept at Excel or similar tools try to use those, but they're not effective for long. For one, the work required to get the data into the spreadsheet is non-trivial, and to keep track of current values, you need to bring in the latest NAVs of all funds on a continuous basis as well. Sooner or later, the spreadsheet becomes outdated and thus unreliable or even misleading. And in any case, even if you stay up to date till a point, this is only accounting data. There is no qualitative element to it. You don't know anything about sectoral or industry or size exposure. If you want to redeem some funds, it's hard to get a handle on potential tax liability.

Most importantly, you don't know anything about fund quality. The bland, stripped-down dataset you get from the official account statements has only transaction data - just NAVs, dates and number of units. There's very little qualitative information you can derive from that, no matter how much of an Excel wizard you are.

On top of that, this is just the analysis and management of what you have invested in. What about choosing fresh investments? What about setting financial goals for your family's future and selecting mutual funds that can fulfil those goals? As life goes on and your financial affairs become more complex, the time for simplicity is long past. If you rely on the simple habits of the past and just glance at some account statements, you might end up missing your life goals despite investing enough!

As business guru Peter Drucker famously said long ago, "What you cannot measure, you cannot manage." So how are you going to manage all this? So what's the solution? How are you going to do all this?

This is where Value Research comes in, especially our premium membership. We have created a single integrated service that can take care of ALL the investment analysis and activities I have listed above and much more. And not just for mutual funds but also stocks, NPS and fixed-income investments. From 'automagically' importing data from your account statements (no more data entry!) to every kind of analysis, goal planning, investment selection and tax calculation, the Value Research Premium membership does the entire job for you.

From the day you make your first investment to any level of portfolio size or complexity with any asset class, our system's algorithms will hold your hand and guide you. What's more, you will also learn WHAT is to be done and WHY it should be done.

Here's an overview of the headline features of our service. Remember, there's a lot more too.

Portfolio Planner: These are custom portfolios suggested to you as part of your premium membership. The algorithm that we have evolved takes into account your goals, your income, your saving capacity and several other factors.

Portfolio Analysis: Only a few members are starting their investing from scratch. For most of you, a big question is whether your existing investments fit your goals. This is often a hard question to answer because there are a lot of implications of switching old investments, not the least of which is taxation. In the Premium system, you can get an evaluation and a suggested fix-list based on our expert teams' inputs.

Analysts' Choice: Often, investors want to choose their funds for some particular investment purpose. There are over 1,500 available to you, and even with the help of our rating system, it's a lot of work to zoom in to the right set. However, that won't be a problem for you because, as a Premium member, you will have access to Analyst's Choice. Instead of the 39 official types of funds, we have created eight investor-oriented categories that match your financial goals. In each of these, my analysts and I have carefully selected a handful of funds to serve you with the best outcomes.

As I said above, these are just the headline facilities. Open http://vro.in/premium in your browser, read more details, see glimpses of what Premium has to offer, read testimonials of our members and start managing your investments right away!