I’d try to elaborate on the options available from the active/passive investments PoV.

Most Passive - VPS:

Relatively safer, as you just have to identify the AMC/insurance copmany. Benefits: You can claim upto 20% tax rebate immediately in your tax returns (by claiming it from your employer if you are salaried individual) You have tax free (CGT, SST) compounding, meaning no tax on dividends/bonuses. Drawback: You have to pay extra fees incase of early (before duration of 25Y or age of 60Y) withdrawal. You don’t have the ability to manage your portfolio directly, however, you can select your assets to be high/medium/low risk investments, resulting in their allocations in debt/equity/gold based MFs.

Medium Active Approach - Mutual Funds & Exchange Traded Funds:

In this case you are buying a basket of stocks (selected/managed by the fund manager). Wherein, you can explore and select the fund based on its previous returns and hope that it’ll provide the same returns in future. Difference between MF and ETF is that ETF is EXCHANGE TRADED meaning you require a broker account to buy them. They can be bought and sold at the present rate at any time during the market trading sessions. However, the Mutual funds are bought by creating an account with the AMC (Al Meezan, etc.).

Most Active Approach - Individual Stocks:

If you can spend the time to research and identify the gems, and have patience/conviction to hold onto them during the market fluctuations, then you should go with this approach.

Hypothetical Example:

Mutual Fund: If I had the (probably) the best MF (let’s assume AMMF giving 65% every year since 2023). My investment return would be about 3 x 65% = 195% (meaning 2 times return). Individual Companies: If I had bought SAZEW in start 2023 for Rs. 45 and sold it on 3rd Oct 2025 at Rs. 1,980. I’d have made about 44x of my invested money. (such returns are not possible with Mutual Funds, atleast not consistently year over year).

I have written quite a long answer, but the conclusion would be as:

Conclusion:

If you are new to the market and can’t tell the difference between two stocks, then keep your money relatively safe in VPS and Mutual Funds/ETFs (compare fees/charges to see your net capital gain). Meanwhile, you should try to understand how to identify high-return-yielding companies, and then with time, start to invest in them little by little and hold onto them, till the right time, identify the right time and sell them.