How To Know When To Sell A Mutual Fund?

We spend a lot of time picking the best mutual funds to buy but, no one really tells us when to sell a mutual fund. This is counter-intuitive because the whole purpose of investing in mutual funds is to earn profits when you sell your mutual funds.

How do you sell your mutual funds? More importantly, how do you know it’s the right time to sell your mutual funds? Read on to understand when you should & when you shouldn’t sell your mutual funds!

3 Situations When People Feel Like Selling Their Mutual Funds

1) When you’ve earned profits – You think you should quit while you’re ahead

2) When you’ve seen loses – You think you should quit & stop further loss

3) When nothing is happening – You think this isn’t working

When To Not Sell A Mutual Fund?

Neither of the 3 reasons listed above is sufficient reason to sell by itself. Just like many factors have to be considered when you’re buying MFs, many factors have to be considered when you’re selling.

In fact the whole point of investing money is to make more money right? So, when you spend days figuring out what to buy and when to buy – you should spend as much time if not more before you sell your mutual funds.

Don’t Sell Out Of Fear

‍At no point should you sell your mutual funds out of sheer fear or panic. Whenever the markets go down, investors panic & focus shifts to survival, savings.

However, selling when the market crashes means you will realize the losses that you’re currently only seeing on your dashboard. The moment you buy or sell – things get real. So, before you sell you should get a full portfolio analysis.

When to Sell Your Mutual Fund?

1. Do it When It’s Time To Realize Your Goals

If you had invested for a home, for a trip, for your child’s college education – basically any of your PP goals and now it’s time to act on that goal – it’s a good reason to sell.

But irrespective of the market conditions you must consult a financial advisor – the idea is to get an expert to help you sell in a manner that you reap the most profits and don’t end up exiting too soon or losing money by way of exit loads, taxes, etc.

2. Maybe You Should Sell When The Mutual Fund Is Losing

‍Getting rid of underperforming funds seems logical right? Yeah… but don’t do it yourself. Consult your financial advisor and get them to evaluate the timeframe & degree of losses. Is your fund underperforming or are all funds in that class underperforming?

Is there an obvious reason for this drop? Is recovery near? All these are questions you must ask your wealth coach.

3. Maybe You Should Sell When The Mutual Fund Changes

‍There are many ways your fund can change and while not all change means you need to sell – you must keep your eyes peeled for changes. For example in the Fund Manager changes you want to understand why it happened.

Is the fund goal going to be the same or is that changing too? Again, it’s a “maybe” situation, so it’s best to consult your financial advisor and understand what they recommend.

4. Maybe You Should Sell When Your Portfolio Objective Changes

‍You may have invested in a set of funds when you were younger with a specific set of goals in mind. Now when you’re older it’s possible that your goal and objectives have changed. In such a situation you will probably look at rebalancing your portfolio.

This is a good reason to sell a fund as long as you are making an informed decision and have an expert to guide you through the process.

5. BIG MAYBE: When Market Conditions May Affect Your Mutual fund And It’s Holdings

‍Such impacts are usually seen in debt funds and this is a current risk in India with issues like the ones we’ve seen with IL&FS, Vodafone, Yes Bank, etc.

For such decisions, you need a very experienced mutual fund advisors (like Cube’s Wealth First for mutual fund advisory)

If you are more of a video content kind of person, you can also watch this episode of The Cube Wealth Show, which talks about how to know when to sell your mutual fund.