The headlines now are devoted to sliding equity markets and stock opportunities to ‘buy the dip’. But that’s not the only window of opportunity to make the most of a correction. With the hike in repo rates earlier this month and a clear path now for higher rates, debt markets too offer scope for timely investments.
While one doesn’t know enough yet to comment on the veracity of these allegations, this does shine the spotlight on the issue of governance at mutual funds. There’s a lot of song and dance on whether listed public companies are managed in the interests of their shareholders. But what about mutual funds?
MFs are essentially custodians of public money, where both profits and losses are entirely passed on to unitholders. I give money to a fund manager to deliver a certain return from an asset class. But I am paying a fixed fee to him which he gets whether he does better or worse than the market. This pass-through nature of mutual funds means that the unitholder is most affected when the fund is mis-governed or mis-managed.
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.
Not so long ago, if debt investors in India wanted to get a 7% plus return, they had to go to post office schemes with (poor service and) a long lock-in period like the PPF or GOI Floating Rate Savings Bonds with a 7-year lock-in period. These options, apart from the difficulty of accessing them, required investors to sacrifice liquidity for returns.
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.
Prime Portfolios are a set of 19 unique portfolios that meet over 30 different investor timeframes and needs. Prime Portfolios are listed under Ready-to-use-portfolios in the Recommendations menu dropdown. These portfolios primarily use mutual funds, but where there are better-suited products such as deposits or government schemes, the portfolios include those too.
If there’s one trend that equity funds don’t seem to be shaking off soon, it is the performance divergence. Over the past few review cycles, we have been highlighting how up-and-coming funds have soared well past the earlier steady performers. Taking stock of the underperformers, the nature of market movements, and returns we have made some key changes to our equity funds in this review cycle.
In January, mutual funds investing overseas came up to a roadblock. As we had explained at the time on these curbs on international funds, Reserve Bank rules limit the amount mutual funds as a whole can invest in foreign securities. The cap stands at $7 billion for all foreign securities other than ETFs and $1 billion for ETFs. That $7 billion mark was close to being breached. And so, SEBI directed international funds to close off fresh subscriptions until a new limit could be worked out with the RBI. Please read our earlier article on this subject to understand the background.
At play here are the RBI’s limits on overseas investments and SEBI’s rules. Here, we’ll list out the concerns you would be having over these limits, what they mean, and what you should do.
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.
These Silver ETFs intend to invest at least 95% of their assets in silver of 99.9% purity. They will benchmark themselves to the daily silver ‘fixing’ – a benchmark price published by the London Bullion Market Association, translated into Rupees.
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