Ariz Zaidi, arizzaidi91@gmail.com, Delhi: I am a new mutual fund investor and investing in L&T emerging business fund direct growth with SIP of 1000 from past one year. I have a time horizon of 2 years but I am seeing high negative figures in my portfolio for this scheme. Should I increase my time horizon in order to gain or exit from the scheme.

Being new to Mutual funds, it is advisable to take a help of a financial advisor in order to structure your portfolio correctly based on risk profile and time horizon. The fund you have selected is a small cap fund which is ideal for investor with a very high risk bearing capacity and the horizon being more than five years. In 2018, small caps have corrected ~30% and thus all the funds having exposure to this asset class have deteriorated. If your time horizon is more than five years, then it is advisable to hold the fund.

Sumit Singh, sumitsingh.leo@gmail.com, Thane, Mumbai: Kindly evaluate my MF investment and advise if any change is required. HDFC Equity Fund - Direct Plan - Growth Option Rs3000 HDFC Tax Saver - Direct Plan - Dividend Rs1000, HDFC Top 100 Fund - Direct Plan - Growth Option Rs1000, HDFC Balanced Advantage Fund - Direct Plan - Growth Option Rs1000, IDFC Multi Cap Fund-Growth-(Direct Plan) Rs3000, ICICI Prudential Bluechip Fund - Direct Plan - Growth Rs2000. Also I invest Rs 4000 in NPS. I want to invest 5000 more.

Most of the funds have a large cap bias in terms of asset allocation and thus is ideal for a conservative to medium risk profile. In case your time horizon is more than 5 years and you can take some risk, we would recommend you to add some Midcap funds. In the absence of information on your risk profile and time horizon, it would be difficult to recommend an exact asset allocation.