What are overnight mutual funds?

1. Overnight funds are open-ended debt mutual fund schemes that invest in overnight securities with a maturity of one day.

2. The fund manager has to buy new securities on a daily basis as securities mature every day.

3. Since they have a very short investment horizon, these schemes are not impacted by interest rate changes and defaults in securities.

4. Overnight funds are supposed to be the safest among the debt mutual fund categories.

5. As they have the lowest risk among all MFs, they also give the lowest returns.

(Content on this page is courtesy Centre for Investment Education and Learning (CIEL). Contributions by Girija Gadre, Arti Bhargava and Labdhi Mehta.)