Invested in equities? Hedge portfolio with gold

When an investor is already invested in equities, Radhika Gupta of Forefront Capital Management advises to hedge the portfolio with a bit of gold. Moreover, it is important to avoid sector specific funds and consolidate it into maybe 3-4 funds that can give better returns, she suggests.

Here is the edited transcript of the interview on CNBC-TV18. Q: Investor wants to invest Rs 1,000 per month and he wants to know how to allocate it. His time period is 5 years. His goal is Rs 12 lakh and he wants it for his child's education. He also has some insurance. It's an LIC Jeevan Aastha, sum assured of only Rs 50,000 and he is paying an annual premium of Rs 4,040 and he has got some investments in equities as well split between a lot of funds like Birla, HDFC Top 200 etc.
A: From what I understand of his investments is that he has got a large amount of money invested in equity mutual funds already, some 7-8 funds. I have two recommendations for him. Since he has so much in equities, I recommend that he park Rs 1,000 a month in gold, because he has a number of equity SIPs already going on. He doesn't need more exposure to equities.
In fact he needs to hedge his portfolio a little bit with gold. If he does any further SIPs they should also be into gold and debt. The second recommendation to him is to avoid some of the sector specific funds he has like the infrastructure funds and consolidate his 8 funds into maybe 3-4 funds.