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Mutual Fund: Nigerian investor discloses his 10 years investment that nosedived 

Fakoyejo Olalekan
Mutual Funds, Mutual Fund gone bad: Nigerian investor discloses his 10 years investment that nosedived , Nigeria’s mutual fund asset value reaches N1 Trillion

Before you invest in a Mutual Fund, you need to read the experience of a Nigerian Researcher, Solomon Udoh, so you won’t get your fingers burnt. Udoh invested N10,000 monthly for 10 years only to get less than he would have had if he had just saved the money for that same period.

Udoh’s disclosure provoked reactions from Nigerians who pointed out the problem with Mutual Funds and how to properly invest.

Udoh disclosed his disappointment in a post via his Twitter account, @laz_inc, with images to back his claim. In the post, Udoh stated that Nigeria as an entity defies all logic one could possibly think of after his balance from the N10,000 monthly investment of 10 years in ARM Discovery Fund showed N936,621.

What you need to know about Mutual Funds

Mutual Funds are pools of money collected from many investors for the purpose of investing in stocks (Equity), bonds, derivatives. Mutual funds are owned by a group of investors and managed by professionals (ARM).

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The types of Mutual Funds are explained below 

Money Market Funds: Money market funds invest in short-term fixed-income securities. Example of short-term fixed-income securities would be government bonds, Treasury bills, commercial paper, and certificates of deposit. These types of fund are generally safer investment but with a lower potential return than other mutual funds.

Fixed Income Funds: Fixed income funds buy investments that pay a fixed rate of return. This type of mutual fund focuses on getting returns coming into the fund primarily through interest.

Equity Funds: Equity funds invest in stocks. Furthermore, there are different types of equity funds, this includes, funds that specialize in growth stocks, value stocks, large-cap stocks, mid-cap stocks, small-cap stocks, or a combination of these stocks.

[READ MORE: A guide to how Mutual Funds work in Nigeria]

Balanced Funds: Balanced funds invest in a mix of equities and fixed income securities – typically in a 40% equity 60% fixed income ratio. The aim of these funds is to generate higher returns but also mitigate risk through fixed income securities.

Index Funds: Index funds aim to track the performance of a specific index. For example, the S&P or TSX. Index funds follow the index and go up when the index goes up and goes down when the index goes down. Index funds are popular as they typically require a lower management fee compared to other funds (due to the manager not needing to do as much research).

Speciality Funds: Specialty funds focus on a very small part of a market such as energy, telecommunications, healthcare, industrials, etc.

The ARM Discovery Fund: Contrary to the expectations of Udoh, a statement by ARM Investment Manager, explained that the investment product is only suitable for investors that want high capital growth over a long term and the strategy adopted by the firm is to invest in equity and real estate.  

Unlike the fixed income securities, which Udoh wanted, as investors’ capital is guaranteed, investing in the equity market does not guarantee whether the capital would be intact or not. Here, movement of share prices is determined mainly by economy policies, operations of the companies and its liquidity status among others.

Considerations before investing in Mutual Funds: Before investing in any mutual fund, the investor has to consider the features of the fund and the objective for investing in the fund as an investor. The investor should ascertain if his investment objective matches the features of the fund.

Conclusion

Conclusion: Before making investment decisions, investors are expected to seek advice from market operators to avoid getting their fingers burnt like Udoh.  

In latter’s case, all he wanted was an investment that would earn him returns or at least guarantee his investment capital and not the one that depletes his fund.  

While it is worthy of note that investing in Mutual Funds like ARM Investment does not necessarily mean a wrong move (depending on the area one looks at it), consulting an operator/expert helps sharpen one’s understanding of the markets and guide against losing fortunes.  

On the flip side, this event has shown how poorly educated Nigerians are about Investment products and there might be a need to increase effort in improving financial literacy.

Reactions trail Udoh’s disclosure

Udoh’s post generated reactions from those with similar issues, those with better knowledge about mutual fund and those who needed clarity as to the miracle that happened to Udoh’s money.

Those with similar stories

According to one @_Nosa_, who reacted to Udoh’s statement, last year, he invested N20,000 into Stanbic’s Equity Fund, but the value has dropped to N14,382. Nosa said he’s trying to end the investment, “To liquidate, I have to go to a branch so we might have to hit N10,000 before I pull the plug.”

Those with better Mutual Fund knowledge

 

Those seeking clarity

And the funny reactions

 

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