Equity market offers very high return then any other option of investment and that is the cause people are attracted towrds stock market. Though the risk involvement in this stock market investment is highest whereby the entire principal invested is entirely at risk. Either you may gain huge amount while on other day you might even lose your investment itself. As the risk involvement is the highest in equity market so the return is also highest. As we know profit is the reward of risk taking.Higher the risk higher is profit earning probability.
Different people should adopt different policies to invest in stock market. First if you can't afford to lose money or make loss do not eneter stock market. If you want to invest only invest the amount you can afford to forgive or don't have obligation of it's availabilty on a particular date.Greed to get more profit in short term period can throw you in risk , this is the basic cause people invest in stock market there hard earned money or savings kept for some special unavodable social purpose which when not invested properly may drain off your entire investment falling you in deep problem both financially and physically including deepression , Heart etc and may lead to suicide tendency or suicide itself.
If you do not have any trading idea and couldn't spare much time to research but had a wish to invest in equity market than mutual fund are the best guiders available. They accumulate the funds of various people and invest in market through market experts and so called gurus. The profit earned is distributed among the investors in there investment ratio. Though the income generated from this source is limited and do not generate high yiel;d as of direct equity investment but the risk involvement is the least.
One may invest one time or systematically. either a lum sum amount could be invested in mutual fund or systematic investment plan could be opted whereby monthly equated investment is made.
Growth plan and dividend plan are the two plans whereby growth plan help to reinvest the amount earned from time to time giving higher returns on redemption while in dividend plan the profit earned is distributed from time to time.
Open end mutual fund could be brought and sold any time while in case of closed end mutual fund only a limited time it is offered to public as in case of IPO's.
Some of the funds charge entry load and exit load which is a type of brokerage while in some cases it is totally extinguished.