The Differences Between ETFs, Digital Gold, And Mutual Funds
Updated On Jun 02, 2022
Table of Contents
Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) take the benefits of mutual fund investing to the next level. ETFs can offer lower operating costs than traditional open-end funds, flexible trading, greater transparency, and better tax efficiency in taxable accounts. There are drawbacks, however, including trading costs and learning complexities of the product. Most informed financial experts agree that the pluses of ETFs overshadow the minuses by a sizable margin.
Digital gold is nothing but a 24 carat 99.9% pure gold investment without the burden of storage. It is invested through online mode via internet banking or UPI transaction. The money is paid online and the seller provides a digital invoice of the aforesaid purchase within 5 minutes. When somebody purchases gold in digital form, the company will stock it in its facilities at secured vaults, which relieves the investor of any chance of theft. In the case of physical gold, if the investor is not buying hallmarked gold jewelry, there will be no certainty about the metal's purity. It will not be a problem for digital gold, as these are certified by government-licensed agencies.
A Mutual Fund scheme is a type of financial instrument which is made by a pool of money collected from many investors. The AMCs invest in securities like company shares, bonds, stocks, debts, and other assets by mutual fund companies. The AMCs manage these open-ended investments. Mutual fund companies allocate the fund in different securities. This helps its investors to grow their wealth through their investments
Benefits of ETFs
ETFs have several advantages over traditional open-end funds. The 4 most prominent advantages are trading flexibility, portfolio diversification and risk management, lower costs, and tax benefits.
-
Trading flexibility
Traditional open-end mutual fund shares are traded only once per day after the markets close. All trading is done with the mutual fund company that issues the shares. Investors must wait until the end of the day when the fund net asset value (NAV) is announced before knowing what price they paid for new shares when buying that day and the price they will receive for shares they sold that day. Once-per-day trading is fine for most long-term investors, but some people require greater flexibility.
-
Lower costs
Operating expenses are incurred by all managed funds regardless of the structure. Those costs include, but are not limited to, portfolio management fees, custody costs, administrative expenses, marketing expenses, and distribution. Costs historically have been very important in forecasting returns. In general, the lower the cost of investing in a fund, the higher the expected return for that fund.
ETF operation costs can be streamlined compared to open-end mutual funds. Lower costs are a result of client service–related expenses being passed on to the brokerage firms that hold the exchange-traded securities in customer accounts. Fund administrative costs can go down for ETFs when a firm does not have to staff a call center to answer questions from thousands of individual investors.
-
Tax benefits
ETFs have 2 major tax advantages compared to mutual funds. Due to structural differences, mutual funds typically incur more capital gains taxes than ETFs. Moreover, capital gains tax on an ETF is incurred only upon the sale of the ETF by the investor, whereas mutual funds pass on capital gains taxes to investors through the life of the investment. In short, ETFs have lower capital gains and they are payable only upon sales of the ETF.
Benefits of Digital Gold
- Convenient and instant purchase/sale
- Purchases in bite-sized quantities. You can start with Re. 1
- No making charges unlike when you buy jewellery or gold coins/bars
- No hassle of storing physical gold
- The gold is stored in secure vaults
- Assurance on the purity of the gold as it is certified by government-licensed agencies
- Highly liquid – you can easily buy/sell units anytime, anywhere
Benefits of Mutual Fund
-
Liquidity
The most important benefit of investing in a Mutual Fund is that the investor can redeem the units at any point in time. Unlike Fixed Deposits, Mutual Funds have flexible withdrawal but factors like the pre-exit penalty and exit load should be taken into consideration.
-
Diversification
The value of an investment may not rise or fall in tandem. When the value of one investment is on the rise the value of another may be in decline. As a result, the portfolio’s overall performance has a lesser chance of being volatile.
-
Expert Management
A novice investor may not have much knowledge or information on how and where to invest. The experts manage and operate mutual funds. The experts pool in money from investors and allocate this money in different securities thereby helping the investors incur a profit.
-
Flexibility to invest in Smaller Amounts
Among other benefits of Mutual Funds the most important benefit is its flexible nature. Investors need not put in a huge amount of money to invest in a Mutual Fund. Investment can be as per the cash flow position. If You draw a monthly salary then you can go for a Systematic Investment Plan (SIP). Through SIP a fixed amount is invested either monthly or quarterly as per your budget and convenience.
Conclusion
Therefore Financial investments are made with the future expectation of making only financial returns in terms of cash flow from the company in which investment is being carried out. The investor relies to a greater extent on the existing management themselves, unlike strategic investors. The term “investment” can be used to refer to any mechanism used for the purpose of generating future income.
Also read- Know The Advantages Of Term Insurance For Senior Citizens
