Whats a mutual fund?how much money is needed to start?

Mutual Funds collect money from you and invest in schemes. You can select the scheme what you want, such as midcap shares, contra shares of the Mutual Funds. THe Funds explain you what they mean and a list of companies in which they have invested your money, will be advised through their bulletins. When the money has grown on a fund, the Mutual Funds declare a dividend and the NAV also increases based on this. A minimum of Rs. 5000 (India) can be done and there are schemes by whcih monthly you can pay for investment in various shcemes.
VR

It's when a bunch of investors pool their money and a portfolio mgr. will buy a bunch of different stocks for the fund. By doing this, you reduce risk by diversifying instead of buying one or two different individual stocks. As far as how much you need, it depends on the particular fund. All are different. Typically it's about $1,000 though. If your new to investing, try an index fund; they follow an index like the S&P 500 or the DJ industrial avg. They are relatively safe cause they just follow the market swings. Anyway hope this helps.

You can start a mutual fund with as little as $50.00 a month. This is what I do for a living. If you would like to know anymore you can e-mail me at saralgreen07@yahoo.com. I would be glad to help. I work with Financial Advisors. There services are free.

A mutual fund is a collection of investments. You give your money to a fund manager and this money goes into a big pot with everybody else's money who has invested in this fund. The fund manager then buys and sells stocks (that fit the goal of the fund) with this money supposedly after researching them. A fund may have many different stocks it is invested in and hundreds of thousands of shares of the stocks. You own a portion of the fund, represented by the number of shares of the fund you have bought. The price of the shares (NAV) fluctuate daily. The minimum amount depends upon the fund. A lot of funds require a minimum of $2500, otherwise you are charged a low-balance fee.

Your money is pooled together with other investors into a fund. The fund is ran by a so called portfolio mgr. They will then buy a bunch of different stocks for the fund. The fund will underperform the market where the company will make there money in some hidden fee that you will never see.

Dumped my mutural fund in the early 2000's. They were my worst investments.

visit http://www.valueresearchonline.com for all your queries on mutual funds.