What is FIFO?

Guides that use FIFO

16 guides put this term to work.

• How mutual fund investing actually works: follow the money, liveInteractive diagrams of the route one ₹10,000 SIP takes through your platform, clearing, the AMC, the RTA and the custodian — and what each may 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 buys — regret protection, not extra return — and how it is taxed.
• 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, not a sale, and why discomfort is the mechanism.
• Mutual fund overlap: are you really diversified?Diversification stops early and overlap starts at once. Why the answer is four to six, how to measure your duplication, 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.
• Tax-loss harvesting: India has no wash-sale rule, and the mirror move nobody makesSell the loser and rebuy it the same day — India has no wash-sale rule. Then run it in reverse, because the ₹1,25,000 exemption does not carry forward.
• 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 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 easy to pass on.
• 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 survives a bad market.
• Moving your funds from one platform to anotherYour platform does not hold your units, so changing apps usually transfers nothing. What 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 2026-27 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.