What are the advantages of investing in aggressive hybrid funds?

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Financial planners believe firsttime equity investors moving from bank deposits to mutual funds can consider an aggressive hybrid fund category, which invests in a mix of equity and debt instruments.

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What are aggressive hybrid funds?

Aggressive mutual funds are hybrid funds that invest between 65% and 80% of their total assets in equity and equity-related instruments and the balance 20-35% in debt securities and money market instruments. Typically, in many schemes, the equity component has a higher allocation to large-cap stocks and debt allocation is to sovereign or AAA-rated papers.

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What are the advantages of aggressive hybrid funds?

Aggressive hybrid funds give you exposure to two asset classes — equity and debt. It gives an automatic asset allocation solution for those who do not want too many mutual fund schemes in their portfolio. This works well for do-it-yourself investors or those who do not want a distributor or a financial planner. Whenever the equity allocation goes above the 65-75% mark, the fund manager is forced to prune it and move to debt and vice versa, thereby helping in auto allocation.

How are aggressive hybrid funds treated for taxation?

The biggest advantage of aggressive hybrid funds is that you get allocation to debt and they are taxed as equity funds. For schemes held for more than a year, long-term capital gains of more than ₹1 lakh are taxed at 10%, while for schemes held for less than a year, short-term capital gains tax of 15% is applicable. Thus, an investor in high tax brackets gets allocation to fixed income by