Although the development of China's fund industry is not very fast, the fund scale is generally on the rise. According to the data released by China Asset Management Association, as of March this year, the scale of public offering of funds in China was 16.64 trillion, a record high, an increase of10.87 trillion compared with February. This shows that there are more and more people investing in funds.

Because there are different types of funds, and the returns and risks of different types of funds will be very different, it is necessary to have a deep understanding of each fund before investing. Among all kinds of funds, equity funds and index funds have relatively large returns and risks, so if you want to make long-term investment, which of these two types of funds is better?

Index fund is actually a branch of stock fund, because index fund also invests in stock market. If we want to distinguish index funds from other stock funds, they can be divided into passive stock funds and active stock funds, and index funds belong to passive funds. If you want to invest in the fund for a long time, you can choose these two funds in the following ways.

What kind of fund should I choose for long-term investment? First of all, look at the expectations of income and risk. If you want to be stable, index funds are naturally more suitable than stock funds. An index that tracks the rise and fall of index funds, and this index is formed by the weighted average of a number of stocks, so buying index funds is equivalent to spreading funds over these stocks.

Although other stock funds will also buy a lot of stocks, the number of stocks they buy may be less than that of index funds, and they may concentrate on buying one or several stocks. The more shares the general fund buys, the more dispersed the risk and the more stable the fund price.

However, compared with index funds, other equity funds have a wider increase. The rise of index funds largely depends on the rise of the tracked index, but as you can see, the index of China A-share market fluctuates for a long time, which limits the rise of index funds.

The growth space of other active stock funds mainly depends on the investment ability of fund managers, and there is no upper limit in theory. Therefore, if you want to have a fund with a large growth space, you should still choose an active stock fund.

Second, look at the way funds are invested. If the funds are invested once and then held for a long time, it is best to choose active stock funds. The reason is also mentioned above, because the stock index may not go out of the long-term upward trend, and the index fund that tracks the index for a long time may not make money. Active funds may realize long-term appreciation.

If the funds are invested in the form of fixed investment, then the index foundation has more advantages. Because even if an index does not rise for a long time, it is unlikely to fall all the time. The worst case is that it fluctuates within a range, and there is a peak when there is a trough. The fixed investment of the fund can reduce the holding cost of the fund when the index is at a low point, and when the index returns to the peak, it will make money. When active equity funds have a trough, they may not be able to return to the peak. Therefore, if we adopt the method of fixed investment and buy index funds for long-term investment, we can make money more stable.