In this post, let us compare two large cap funds from the  same fund house. One a consistent performer with a terrific track record and the other a young superstar. The results will hopefully show how herd instincts among investors (and perhaps amcs  and therefore(?) intermediaries too?) can obscure good funds from the same fund house….

In the first part on why you should ignore mutual fund star ratings, I had stressed on the importance of focusing on our portfolio health and performance of the fund with its benchmarks. In this post I would like to add a couple more reasons to strengthen the argument. Let us assume that an investor named Tom has chosen…

‘Should I choose only five star rated mutual funds?’, ‘Should I switch funds each time my funds rating is downgraded?’. These are extremely common questions among mutual fund investors.  In this post, let us discuss how star fund ratings are irrelevant to the goal-based investor. Any action, buy, sell, hold, switch etc. should be based on…

It is raining closed-ended mutual fund NFOs. Here is why one should avoid this category of mutual funds. There are many articles that describe the features of closed-ended mutual funds. Therefore, I will not mention them here. Let us focus on the titular suggestion alone. 1) The first and foremost rule of purchasing – be…

This post details a backtesting analysis based on the investment strategy to be adopted by the NFO IDFC Dynamic Equity Fund. It is inspired by a thread in facebook group Asan Ideas for Wealth started by Anup Maheswari. IDFC Dynamic Equity Fund (IDEF) is a quantitative tactical asset allocation fund along the lines of  Franklin’s…

What factors should we consider before choosing a mutual fund or evaluating a mutual that we hold? Should we only look at star ratings? Should we consider only returns? Risk-adjusted returns perhaps? Should we track the actions of the fund manager? Should I understand the kind of stocks that he/she has picked or is likely…

On Aug. 25th 2014, the Economic Times carried an article titled, PPF investment can beat Sensex returns over 20-year period. They showed that between Aug. 1994 to Aug. 2014, Sensex returned an annualized return of 9.15% while the PPF returned 10.46%. Needless to mention this article created a lot of buzz among investors and distributors. Investors panicked and…

We choose a type of instrument almost solely based on the kind of returns that it can yield.  Thus, our expectation is governed by past history. While there is nothing wrong with this, past returns can vary quite a bit, and depends on the period chosen for evaluation. While it is a good idea to base…