The Risk of Mutual Fund

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2.1.7 The Risk of Mutual Fund

All investment has their own risk besides giving return to investors, as well as mutual fund. The risk of mutual fund tends to be lower if it is compared to direct investment of stocks. It occur as the effect of proportional portfolio owned by some investors, invested and diversified by fund manager to several instruments whether in capital market or money market. The risk is getting lower as the effect of regulation stated that mutual fund cannot buy a stock exceed five percent of an issue. On the other side, the regulation also stated that mutual fund cannot allocate the wealth exceed ten percent into a company. If mutual fund buys some effect issued by a company, then all of the value cannot exceed ten percent of Net Asset Value when the transaction happens. Besides some benefits that investors may get, there are several risks on mutual fund investment. Even portfolio and diversification is done, still there are some possibilities for risks to occur. Some of the risks are stated as follows Gunawan and Almira, 2006: 21 – 24: a The decline of units net asset value The decline of units’ net asset value may occur when the market price of investment instrument less than the beginning purchase price. The growing performance of mutual fund net asset value not always guarantees that the price would not become any lower in the following days. There are several causes lead to the declining of portfolio investment market price such as the weaker performance of stock market, the loss of issuers, unstable political and economical condition, and other fundamental causes. 27 b Liquidity risk Liquidity is one of important requirement of investment so it may achieve maximum performance. Without the existence of liquidity, investors may find difficulties in the form of cash loss because they cannot sell the investment portfolio. Mutual fund owner will redeem the units and hope to get the cash as fast as possible. The liquidity risk may happen if units’ holders of a fund manager withdraw in the huge amount of money in a same time. On the other words, fund manager face a rush of mutual fund units, where the withdrawal is done in huge amount and in the same time. Postpone of payment or liquidity difficulties may suffered by fund manager and bank if there is not enough money on withdrawal date. This moment may happen if units’ holder does the redemption to a fund manager in huge amount. This situation may happen if there is an extremely negative sentiment factor so it affects the unit holders to do the redemption immediately. Those factors are stated such as weaker political and economical condition, issuers’ bankruptcy, and liquidated fund manager. c Market risk Market risk is the situation when the investment instrument faces a decline as the cause of stock market and bond market performance extreme declining. This circumstance is also called by bearish, when the price of stocks and investment instruments face an extreme decline. Market risk in turn will make the net asset value lower. 28 d Default risk Default risk is considered as the most fatally risk in the risk category. It happen because the fund manager buys bonds from an issuers who face difficulties and unable to pay the bond dividend. To avoid the default risk, fund manager usually do some rating selection of bonds which are feasible to become investment portfolio. This kind of selection will create investment grade.

2.1.8 Jakarta Composite Index JCI