A mutual fund is a professionally-managed trust that pools the savings of many investors and invests them in securities like stocks, bonds, short-term money market instruments and commodities such as precious metals.
Mutual funds are classified in a variety of ways. But the first classification is:
Open-ended funds: These funds buy and sell units on a continuous basis and, hence, allow investors to enter and exit as per their convenience. The units can be purchased and sold even after the initial offering (NFO) period (in case of new funds). The units are bought and sold at the net asset value (NAV) declared by the fund.
The number of outstanding units goes up or down every time the fund house sells or repurchases the existing units. This is the reason that the unit capital of an open-ended mutual fund keeps varying. The fund expands in size when the fund house sells more units than it repurchases as more money is flowing in.
Closed-ended funds: The unit capital of closed ended funds is fixed and they sell a specific number of units. Unlike in open-ended funds, investors cannot buy the units of a closed-ended fund after its NFO period is over. This means that new investors cannot enter, nor can existing investors exit till the term of the scheme ends. However, to provide a platform for investors to exit before the term, the fund houses list their closed-ended schemes on a stock exchange.
Trading on a stock exchange enables investors to buy and sell units through a broker in the same manner as transacting the shares of a company. The number of outstanding units of a closed-ended fund does not change as a result of trading on the stock exchange. The closed-ended funds are free from the worry of regular and sudden redemption and their fund managers are not worried about the fund size
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