Original analysis, reports, reviews and insights on developments in the mutual fund space and in-depth reviews
Shyam Sunder asks, “I have been investing in SBI Bluechip Fund via SIP for about six years now. The fund has underperformed its benchmark for the last five years. Should I stop my SIP and invest elsewhere?” Let us discuss this dilemma faced by many large cap mutual fund investors. At this point, it is…
Continue reading →Sandeep asks, “can you please advice me on how a 22 aged guy should design his investment portfolio & invest regularly?” When the right question is asked at the right time, it can be a gamechanger. We will leave it to the judgment of the reader whether the question was posed to the right person…
Continue reading →The “mutualfundsahihai” ads are into their second innings and this time around, the young earners who dreamt of big returns appreciate that big risk comes first! So much so that AMFI now includes a line “MFs are for those who wish to understand risks” (and hopefully don’t*). There is more to mutual fund risk than…
Continue reading →Investors often wish to classify mutual funds beyond the SEBI designated categories. A natural way to do this is to try and classify them in term of returns: high-return funds, medium-return funds and low-return funds. With low, medium and high defined in terms of say, an SBI fixed deposit account. Will this work? Immediately a…
Continue reading →ICICI Prudential Freedom SIP also known as Freedom SIP is a combination of systematic investing (SIP) in certain source schemes (equity-oriented or hybrid) followed by a switch to a target scheme (hybrid) and systematic withdrawal (SWP) from it. Here is what you need to know about the freedom SIP and why you should avoid it….
Continue reading →Arbitrage mutual funds invest a predominant part of their portfolio in derivative and arbitrage instruments associated with the stock and bond markets. Aside from unnatural events (see below), their day to day volatility is similar to ultra-short-term funds. Thus typically arbitrage funds have debt fund-like NAV fluctuations and equity-fund like taxation. This makes it appealing…
Continue reading →We present the result of SIP returns comparison: Nifty 50 vs active mutual funds (large cap, large and mid cap, mid cap, small cap and multi-cap) over the last fifteen years. The dramatic drop in outperformance seems to have started seven-eight years ago and not just from Feb 2018 as earlier believed. We had earlier…
Continue reading →“What return can I expect from a Nifty 50 SIP over the next 10 years?” This is a typical newbie question. We have pointed out that no one can or no one should expect returns from mutual funds. Yet we still see statements on social media that 10-12% return is “easily possible”. On what basis…
Continue reading →In a circular dated Oct 5th2020, SEBI once again changed the norms for “Product Labeling in Mutual Fund schemes” – the third such change in the last seven years. In what can only be seen as bizarre, SEBI ruled that a change in the “risk-o-meter” dial for a fund need not be considered as a…
Continue reading →We find that only three actively managed small cap mutual funds have managed to beat the Nifty Next 50 total returns index consistently over three, four and five-year durations. This study follows the Handpicked List of Mutual Funds Oct-Dec 2020 (PlumbLine) edition where we pointed out that we will be reevaluating small cap and midcap mutual…
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