Grow
Equity
Buying equity means owning shares in individual companies directly, rather than through a fund. It offers the highest long-run growth of the common asset classes and the most violent short-term swings, concentrated in whatever you happen to hold. It suits a minority of investors, and it is worth being honest about whether you are in it.
- Risk
- High. A single company can fall far further than a diversified fund, and stay there.
- Horizon
- 7+ years, and a temperament to match
Who this suits
- Investors whose core portfolio is already sorted, adding a satellite they understand
- People with genuine interest in following businesses, not just prices
- Holders of inherited or employer shares deciding what to do with them
What to be careful about
- Concentration. Ten stocks feel diversified and are not, especially when they share a sector.
- Confusing a rising market with skill. Everyone is a good stock-picker until the cycle turns.
- Trading costs and short-term capital gains tax, which quietly eat the returns of frequent activity.
The honest pitch
Direct equity is the only product on this page list where our first advice is often “less of it”. The long-run returns of good businesses are real. So is the record of retail portfolios that concentrated in the wrong ones, bought late and sold early.
Owning shares well is a hobby that pays only if you do the work: reading results, understanding the business, sitting still through drawdowns. If that sounds like effort rather than pleasure, a diversified fund gives you the same asset class without the single-company risk.
Where it fits
After the foundations. Emergency fund in place, insurance sized to your obligations, core portfolio diversified. Then a satellite of businesses you genuinely follow can add both return and interest to a plan — sized so that being wrong about one of them is survivable.
Equity is distributed under separate arrangements from mutual funds; ask us for the specifics before you commit anything.
What costs should you check before buying shares?
Ask the broker for the full tariff: brokerage, applicable transaction charges and taxes, and account or custody charges. Check both buying and selling costs. A low brokerage headline does not tell you the complete cost of holding and trading shares.
Compare shares with a diversified mutual fund · Understand asset allocation
Updated 10 September 2026 · Contact Pardeep Yadav
This product is distributed under separate regulatory arrangements from mutual funds (which we distribute under ARN-86344). Registration and empanelment specifics for this product are available on request — see our disclosures .
Common questions
Shares or mutual funds?
For the core of a family's growth money, funds, almost always. Diversification and professional management are worth more than the expense ratio they cost. Direct shares make sense as a satellite around that core, sized so a total loss in one name would annoy you rather than change your plans.
How much of my portfolio should be in direct equity?
There is no universal figure, but the honest test is this: if your largest single holding fell by half and stayed there for three years, would your goals survive? Size to pass that test. For most households that lands well under a fifth of the equity allocation.
I hold shares from my employer or an inheritance. Keep or sell?
Judge them as if you were buying today with fresh money. Would you? Sentiment and capital gains tax both complicate the answer, which is why this decision is worth working through with the whole picture in front of you rather than on instinct.
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