As the interest of the public is growing in financial matters, investment in unit trusts is rapidly gaining popularity in this country. The reasons for this are:

SMALL SUMS CAN GET YOU IN Small investors may participate in “big time” investments in a unit trust with small sums of money. Some funds even allow monthly investments of R50 per month.

DIVERSIFICATION The small initial investment required enables an investor to have a range of unit trust investments thus providing diversification. The unit trusts themselves spread their investments so that the diversification is increased still further.

Funds Investing

SKILLED MANAGEMENT Very few individuals have the time, skill or money to research the investment opportunities available in today’s complex financial market. The top unit trusts are run by skilled professional management teams all vying with each other to be Number One in their field. That is why the good trusts, even after their management charges have been taken into account, will get better results than the average person in the street.

WORRY-FREE OWNERSHIP With direct investment there may be lots of time involved consulting with stockbrokers about the state of the market, or chasing up tenants, or handling calls about maintenance and getting quotes from tradesmen. If you have properly managed investments you can leave it all to the managers. The only worry you then have is whether or not they perform.

Of course there are a minority of people who invest mainly for the fun, or the interest of doing all the leg work themselves. They get a great kick out of spending hours poring over charts of share prices, discussing the state of the markets or buying and selling and renovating property. Investment in unit trusts is probably not appropriate for these people.

READY CASHABILITY The benefit of ready cashability of your investment cannot be overestimated. One never knows when some unexpected circumstance will arise and money will be needed in a hurry. Generally a unit trust investment can be converted back to cash within seven days at most and often sooner.

UNIQUE OPPORTUNITIES The sum of a lot of small investors’ savings can be enormous and provide each investor with the opportunity to be a part owner of a multi-million rand development that would be out of reach of any of them individually. The major shopping centres and prestige inner city buildings owned by property trusts are examples.

LEGAL PROTECTION Public unit trusts have to have their prospectuses scrutinised by the Registrar of Financial Institutions and investors’ money is under the control of the Unit Trust Control Act. This helps to minimise the chances of loss.

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