We upset a few of you with our call on some of the Axis funds last week 😊 Some of you commented on the blog and others raised tickets. We thought it would be better for us to respond through an article for the benefit of others as well.
Axis Mutual Fund issued a public notice removing and replacing two of its fund managers, Viresh Joshi and Deepak Agarwal, from seven of its schemes — Banking, Technology, Consumption, and Nifty ETFs and Axis Value, Quant and Arbitrage Funds. This move was accompanied by speculation that the managers were suspended on front-running charges. Axis Mutual Fund hasn’t explicitly mentioned front-running charges, but it has confirmed that it has been investigating “potential irregularities” with the help of external advisors.
Some funds have a clear fundamental strategy that shows in their portfolio construct. When that strategy pays off, they deliver. But many good-to-hear strategies have failed for many mutual funds in recent years. This is partly due to fast-shuffling sector preferences in the market and partly due to high stock weights in the index that funds struggle to replicate. As a result, you see them underperforming key indices.
As a result of having many categories, many of you end up having duplication in debt funds in your portfolio inadvertently – by believing that spreading across different categories, you’re diversifying. However, funds that may be in different categories but not necessarily doing anything different for your portfolio.
Last week, we announced the beginning of our coverage of privately placed bonds. Today, we’re issuing the first of such calls. The private issuance of this unlisted bond was done on March 4, 2022 and it is now available as a secondary sale of privately placed bonds. Our report and recommendation here is on this secondary sale.
We have received questions on how to use & choose debt investment options. These questions assume importance in the present changing rate scenario and we thought we should address those questions.
It is at this juncture, that DSP AMC has chosen to launch an NFO – the DSP Global Innovation Fund of Fund. And we think this NFO is trying to partly answer the above questions you have.
It’s raining ETF NFOs, and how! In the five years between 2015-19 you had about 50 new ETFs (excluding gold). In less than half that 5-year period – i.e., between 2020 and now – you have close to 50 ETFs launched!
Introducing Prime MF Screener (beta now) – a research screener that empowers you like no other MF retail research tool in India. Prime MF Screener is a research tool that will help you screen mutual funds using key performance parameters as well as portfolio parameters. The end objective can be to either choose funds for investing, to make decisions on exiting or simply review performance and quality of your funds vis-à-vis peers/benchmark.
On December 1, you would have received text messages from various AMCs on the ‘Potential Risk Class Matrix’ (PRC) of the debt schemes you hold. If you’re worried about any change in risk profile of your fund based on this, you should read this article.
The Nippon India Taiwan Equity Fund will invest in the new Taiwan dollar (NRD) currency. It is noteworthy that this currency has appreciated by about 5% annually against the rupee over a 10-year period.
Prime Strategy: How to invest in debt funds now?
If you had invested in an ultra-short debt fund like Axis Treasury Advantage 3 years ago, your returns would be 7.3% CAGR now. Not bad at all by today’s standards, right? If you invested in the same fund 2 years ago in November 2019, your returns would be 6% – still not terrible. But what if you had invested in this fund just a year ago?
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