Glossary· Costs & scheme terms
What is Growth vs IDCW option?
Whether gains stay invested or get paid out.
Growth compounds everything inside the fund. IDCW (Income Distribution cum Capital Withdrawal, formerly "dividend") pays some out — but it is your own capital coming back, and the NAV drops by the amount paid. IDCW is not extra income.
For the formula and the constants behind this figure, see Methodology.
Guides that use Growth vs IDCW option
7 guides put this term to work.
- What is NAV — and does a low NAV mean a cheap fund?It is a division, not a price. The arithmetic that settles the ₹12 vs ₹847 question for good, the NFO trap it creates, and which day’s NAV you actually get.
- Growth vs IDCW: which option should you pick?An IDCW comes out of your own NAV and is taxed at your slab rate. The arithmetic, the reinvestment trap, and the rare case where it still makes sense.
- The twelve mistakes that cost first-time SIP investors the mostAlmost none of the money new investors lose goes to bad funds. It goes to plan, cost, horizon and behaviour — and every one of these is avoidable by someone who was warned.
- 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.
- Dividend yield funds: do high-dividend stocks make better funds?A value strategy wearing an income costume. Why the dividends land in the NAV rather than your bank account, and why an SWP beats this for cash flow.
- 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.
- Analysis paralysis: how to stop researching and startThe gap between a good fund and the best fund is small; the gap between investing and researching is enormous. The one-hour version that gets you started.
More on costs & scheme terms
What you pay, and the rules attached to buying and selling units.
- Expense ratio
- The fund's annual running cost, as a percentage of assets.
- Direct vs Regular plan
- The same portfolio, sold with or without distributor commission built in.
- Exit load
- A fee charged when you redeem within a stated period.
- Lock-in
- A period in which units cannot be redeemed at all.
- Stamp duty
- A flat 0.005% government levy on every mutual fund purchase.
- Minimum SIP / lumpsum
- The smallest instalment and the smallest one-time amount the scheme accepts.
- NFO
- A scheme's initial subscription window, before it starts trading.