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Many of us invest in financial markets with limited or no knowledge. And then there are delusions created out of failed experiences and incomplete understandings which lead us into making investments that may not suit our profile or goals and thus forming lifelong apprehensions about the financial markets. But hiring a professional person or agency would give entirely different results.

Diversify

"Dont put all your eggs in one basket", this is a well-known proverb. Needless to say, all investments must be aligned to this proverb, too. One should diversify investments across asset classes, such as equities, fixed income and other instruments to achieve the desired goals with reduced risks. It also helps in balancing under-performance by one as-set class among good performance by other asset classes. These days, mutual funds are the new way of investing. Mutual funds pool in money from a large number of people and invest ar per their objective with the help of professional fund manager to realise their dreams. This money is invested in a basket of stocks and other financial instruments such as bonds or commodities as per the objective of the scheme. Every mutual fund is thus managed by a professional fund manager, who, using his expertise, is capable of providing better results than what an investor can manage on his own.

Discipline
But, like any other successful thing in life, successful investing even through mutual funds needs discipline. To start with, there is no special time to invest, but any time is good time to invest. Investors often ponder upon this as they want to ensure that they dont lose their capital. The truth is that the stock market are volatile and there is no particular time to invest, thus in the linger run, any time is a good time to invest.

Start Early
When, it comes to investing early birds get more worm. Starting early helps take the benefit of compounding which can create huge difference to our contributions and corpus. For example, if we contribute Rs 2,000 every month for 20 years, the final accumulated amount would be Rs 15,18,738 at an annualized return of 10 percent per annum whereas one would need to contribute Rs 7,400 every month if a similar amount it to be accumulated in 10 years.

Stay Regular
The markets are never easy for everyone; on a given day market volatility can give jitters to even the best in trade. But, then how can we take care of this volatility? Well, if we invest regularly we can easily beat this volatility. Systematic Investment Plans, more popularly known as SIP, are among the best way to invest regularly and ride the stock market volatility easily. They ensure final prices are averaged out and the final average cost of investment is lowered.

Focus on Goals
Beware, dont be driven by returns. In life it is definitely more important to achieve your goals then the amount of returns you achieve. Thus, an investor should always pick up the asset class depending upon his goals and his risk appetite and definitely not returns. Therefore, before making any investments, first define an investment philosophy and assess your investment objectives, and then achieve your financial and life goals.

Re-Balance
In the longer run, out performance by one asset class can shift the balance of portfolio and make it skewed. To avoid this, it is advisable to re-visit your portfolio on regular intervals and re-balance it to savour the fruits of both equity and debt. Re-balancing the portfolio means periodic selling and buying portions of the portfolio to bring the allocation between them to acceptable levels.

Last, but not the least, as in other life changing habits, such as starting to exercise, starting to eat healthy or starting to donate, what is most important is to start. Thus, even in investing what is important is to start investing.