Fund, in English, refers to a certain amount of funds set up for a certain purpose. It mainly includes trust and investment funds, provident funds, insurance funds, retirement funds and funds of various foundations.
From the accounting point of view, capital is a narrow concept, which refers to funds with specific purposes and uses. The fund we are talking about mainly refers to the securities investment fund.
Classification:
According to different standards, securities investment funds can be divided into different types:
(1) According to whether the fund unit can be increased or redeemed, it can be divided into open-end funds and closed-end funds. Open-end funds are not traded on the market (as the case may be), but are purchased and redeemed by banks, brokers and fund companies, and the fund scale is not fixed; Closed-end funds have a fixed duration and are generally listed and traded on the stock exchange. Investors buy and sell fund shares through the secondary market.
(2) According to different organizational forms, it can be divided into corporate funds and contractual funds. A fund is established by issuing fund shares to establish an investment fund company, which is usually called a corporate fund; The establishment of fund managers, fund custodians and investors through fund contracts is usually called contractual funds. China's securities investment funds are all contractual funds.
(3) According to the different investment risks and returns, it can be divided into growth funds, income funds and balanced funds.
(4) According to different investors, it can be divided into bond funds, stock funds, money funds and hybrid funds.
Investment funds:
General funds mainly invest in large-cap blue-chip stocks, and when calculating the Shanghai Composite Index, large-cap blue-chip stocks also account for a great weight, so the decline and rise of funds are generally related to the decline and rise of the Shanghai Composite Index.
However, it is different for different funds. Some funds are closely related to the Shanghai Composite Index, others are irrelevant, and even some funds can rise when the market falls, depending on what stocks the fund holds.
Investment funds originated in Britain, but prevailed in the United States. After the First World War, the United States replaced Britain as the new hegemon of the world economy, and jumped from a capital importing country to a capital exporting country. With the rapid growth of American economy, the increasingly complex economic activities make it more and more difficult for some investors to judge the economic trend. In order to effectively promote foreign trade and foreign investment, the United States began to introduce the investment trust fund system.
1926 The Massachusetts Financial Services Company in Boston established the Massachusetts Investment Trust Company, which became the first modern mutual fund in the United States. In the following years, the fund experienced its first glorious period in the United States. By the end of the 1920s, the total assets of all closed-end funds had reached $2.8 billion, while the total assets of open-end funds were only $6,543.8+$400 million, but the growth rate of the latter was higher than that of closed-end funds.