What is bothering new MF investors the most?

New investors are extremely unhappy about their mutual fund these days. According to mutual fund investors, many of them have been complaining bitterly about the recent happenings in the mutual fund industry and how they have lost faith in mutual funds. Some others complain about the poor performance of equity mutual funds in the last two to three years. Some others are struggling to digest the extra risks they have recently discovered in their debt mutual fund investments.Advisors say a detailed explanation about the particular concern mostly satisfy these investors. However, a significant number of them are still left dissatisfied. And they are growing in numbers. Advisors earlier used to believe that these investors haven’t fully understood the nature of their investments and they used to talk to them about their risk profile and suitability of those investments to them.However, they now admit that they were addressing wrong issue. These investors surely knew about the risks involved in investing in equity mutual funds. Or it could be volatile for a few months. However, what they haven’t understood or failed to grasp is their investments may not offer any returns for a few years. Worse, the returns could be negative or even below (hold your breath) bank deposits. Clearly, all the long conversations about risk and volatility with their advisors failed to convey to these investors that they cannot expect a steady rate of return from equity year after year. Or in market lingo, equity does not offer linear returns. In other words, they have not been told clearly that what all those key words mean is that their investment would give them negative returns for a few years, below bank deposits for a few years, and supernormal returns after that or in the reverse order. It seems, even now this is not clearly conveyed to investors, who have been blaming everything – advisors, industry, economy, pandemic - for their misery.Most of these investors knew that the market can get into rough pockets for a while – they assumed this as the risk and volatility associated with investing in equity mutual funds. What complicates the matter is the performance of key indices. These investors keep hearing about “spectacular recovery of Sensex’ every other week and they fail to understand why the upside is not reflecting in their investments. That calls for a master class in narrow rallies in the market.Action plan for new investors:Go back to drawing board. Revisit your goals and targets.Reassess your risk profileNow, check whether you have chosen the right assets/categoriesIf no, you should stop your investments immediatelyIf you can afford to give more time, hold on to your investmentsAlways consider taxes and loads before selling your investments