What is FIFO?

Guides that use FIFO

15 guides put this term to work.

• How mutual fund investing actually works: follow the money, liveInteractive diagrams of the whole pipeline — the route one ₹10,000 SIP takes through your platform, clearing, the AMC, the RTA and the custodian, and what each is allowed to touch.
• The CAS: every fund you own, in one free statementOne document, requested with a PAN and a registered email, lists every holding across every fund house — and surfaces the forgotten folios almost everyone has.
• STP: how to deploy a lump sum without betting on one dateThe waiting money earns debt-fund returns instead of sitting in savings. What an STP actually buys — regret protection, not extra return — and why each instalment is taxable.
• SWP: creating your own monthly pensionWhy a withdrawal plan beats an IDCW payout on tax and on control, how each instalment is taxed, and the sequence risk that decides whether the money lasts.
• Portfolio rebalancing: when and why you must sell winning assetsDrift is a risk decision you never made. Bands over hunches, the execution ladder that starts with new money rather than a sale, and why the discomfort is the mechanism.
• Mutual fund overlap: are you really diversified?Diversification stops early and overlap starts immediately. Why the answer is four to six, how to measure the duplication you already own, and how to unwind it without a tax bill.
• How to clean up a portfolio with too many schemesFour moves in strict order: see everything, label every holding, stop the inflows, then unwind slowly across financial years using the annual exemption.
• Mutual fund taxation decoded: short-term vs long-term capital gainsEquity, debt, hybrid and ELSS are taxed under different rules, and the rules changed twice in three years. What applies now, and to which of your units.
• Estate planning for mutual fund investors: transmission and legalitiesNomination, a will and joint holding — what each one actually does, what transmission involves without them, and why inheriting does not reset the capital-gains clock.
• The 4% rule vs an SWP: funding early retirement in IndiaThe rule answers a US question — 30 years, US inflation, no tax. Re-deriving it for a 45-year Indian retirement lands closer to 3–3.5%, or roughly 29× spending.
• Building multi-generational wealth with mutual fundsWealth survives through structure, documentation and conversation rather than returns — and funds are divisible, professionally managed and sit inside a formal transmission process.
• Building a passive income stream from mutual fundsNever through IDCW, which hands back your own capital at slab rate. An SWP taxes only the gain portion — plus the bucket structure that makes the income survive a bad market.
• Moving your funds from one platform to anotherYour platform does not hold your units, so changing apps usually transfers nothing. The distinction that costs money is a Regular-to-Direct switch, which is a redemption.
• Tracing and claiming a deceased relative's mutual fundsFind, then claim, then decide. The three routes by what was recorded, why you transmit rather than redeem, and the cost basis that carries over intact.
• Automated rebalancing: robo-advisor or do it yourself?In India the deciding variable is tax: rebalancing inside a fund costs nothing, rebalancing across your own funds realises gains every time.

More on tax

Indian capital-gains treatment as it applies to mutual fund redemptions. Rates are FY 2025-26 and exclude surcharge, cess and STT.

STCG

Gains on units sold before the holding period for long-term treatment is met.

LTCG

Gains on units held past the long-term threshold — 12.5% where it applies.

Equity-oriented fund

A fund holding at least 65% Indian equity — the test that decides its tax treatment.