Mutual Funds vs Shares: What’s the difference?

From where do you get the vegetables for dinner? Do you grow them in your backyard, or purchase it from the nearest mandi/supermarket depending on what you need? Growing your own veggies is a great way of eating healthy food, but effort is spent on seed selection, manuring, watering, pest control, etc. The latter option allows you to choose from a wide variety without the hard work.

Similarly, you can create wealth by investing directly in shares of good companies or invest in them through Mutual Funds. Wealth can be created when we buy company stocks which use our money to grow their business, creating value for us.

Direct investment in shares carries a relatively higher risk element. You need to pick stocks by researching the company and sector. It’s a humongous task to choose few companies from thousands of them listed on the stock exchange. Once done, you need to keep a track of every stock's performance.

In Mutual Funds, the stock picking is done by expert fund managers. You need to keep track of the performance of the fund and not individual stocks within the fund. They also allow investment flexibility unlike stocks, with growth/dividend options, top-ups, systematic withdrawals/transfer, etc. besides helping to ride over volatility by investing smaller amounts regularly through SIPs.