India's mutual fund industry, led by market leaders Reliance Mutual Fund, ICICI Prudential and UTI MF, has witnessed a fall of over Rs 58,000 crore (Rs 580 billion) in its assets during March.Despite the fall, Reliance MF continued to be the most valued fund house in the country with Assets Under Management (AUM) of Rs 90,937.94 crore (Rs 909.37 billion) at the end of March.
rediffGURU Samkit Maniar answers readers' personal income tax queries
The last fiscal marked the fourth consecutive year of loss of folios by mutual funds.
Chandresh Nigam will join Prudential-ICICI MF in July as senior fund manager (equity), and will report to Dileep Madgavkar, vhief investment officer.
The government has been pressing citizens to pay taxes and be compliant, but they have very little to show regarding improved efficiencies in the companies they themselves own, the fund managers said.
Omkeshwar Singh, Head, Rank MF, a mutual fund investment platform, answers your queries.
Ask rediffGURU Ulhas Joshi your mutual fund queries.
The Indian equity markets have significantly increased in importance within the emerging market (EM) basket of stocks in recent years. Since 2018, India's weighting in the Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) EM Index - tracked by passive funds with assets of nearly $500 billion - has doubled, while the number of domestic stocks has grown by almost 70 per cent.
Come January 1, 2011, all the new as also existing MF investors would need to disclose if they are or have been a head of state.
'Small cap funds do have their own merits and they make sense when the investor has a longer investment horizon.'
The flows may stem and redemptions pressure increase following the market meltdown of Monday amid mounting cases of coronavirus infection globally.
Hybrid mutual fund (MF) offers, expected to drive higher investor interest after the change in debt fund taxation, are set to end 2023 with the slowest account growth in the past three years. Investment accounts in hybrid funds are up 5.7 per cent so far in 2023 compared with 7.6 per cent in 2022 and 20 per cent in 2021, shows the data from the Association of Mutual Funds in India (Amfi). In 2020, the count had dipped 2.4 per cent.
Actively managed debt funds with the flexibility to go long on duration made a strong comeback on the returns chart in 2023, thanks to softening bond yields. The average one-year returns of floater, long-duration, gilt, and dynamic bond funds, which ranged between 2.3 per cent and 4.5 per cent at the end of 2022, now stand at over 7.2 per cent, with some schemes delivering over 8.5 per cent, according to data from Value Research. Debt fund returns are inversely related to yields of underlying investments, meaning a decline in yields is positive for funds.
Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone has repaid Rs 1,500 crore loan and will repay another Rs 1,000 crore in commercial papers due in March. The Adani Group firm paid Rs 1,000 crore to SBI Mutual Fund and Rs 500 crore to Aditya Birla Sun Life Mutual Fund on commercial papers that matured on Monday, as scheduled.
rediffGURU Sunil Lala answers your MF-related queries.
Over the past 25 years the MF industry has come a long way. Geographic reach has increased, many more customers have been added, more channels have been opened up and the product basket is full.
As per the latest data available with the Securities and Exchange Board of India, there was a net outflow of Rs 59,726 crore (RS 597.26 billion) in June as against a net inflow of Rs 1,46,094 crore (RS 1,460.94 billion) in the previous two months.
Notwithstanding sharp volatility in March, mutual fund (MF) investors didn't fight shy of investing in riskier small-cap-oriented schemes. Inflows into small-cap funds were not just the highest in absolute terms, they were also the maximum as a proportion of assets under management (AUM) among all market capitalisation (m-cap)-oriented categories. Investors funnelled Rs 2,430 crore down small-cap funds - 1.8 per cent of their AUM of Rs 1.33 trillion.
Operational and compliance challenges foreseen for fund houses in deducting tax at source, resulting in possible TDS mismatches and disputes with investors.
Follow these simple steps if you want to create a solid retirement corpus and retire young, says Anamika Pareek.
Mutual fund houses have been on an equity buying spree in the past three months as they have invested a net amount of Rs 55,000 crore in them between January and March 2023. The number is more than double the amount deployed in the preceding three months (October to December), signalling improved valuations and favourable economic indicators. The valuations, which had peaked in October 2021, returned to its long-term average in March 2023.
Even as net flows into smallcap funds in March turned negative, for the first time in 30 months, they remained a big draw for new investors. The smallcap fund category saw a net of 360,000 investment accounts, or folios, getting added last month, the second-most among all active equity categories. Smallcap funds' continued traction could be driven by their strong performance across timeframes, say experts.
Mutual funds' equity buying remained elevated for the fifth consecutive month in December, taking the net equity purchase past Rs 1.7 trillion in 2023. The aggressive buying in December indicates that flows into equity funds are likely to have remained unaffected by the sharp run-up in the market last month. Mutual funds (MFs) bought equities worth Rs 23,000 crore last month (until December 28) compared to Rs 18,000 crore in November, shows data from the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi).
Both the debt and equity markets have seen sharp volatility in recent months.
The sharp surge in investment accounts (folios) in midcap and smallcap mutual funds (MF) in recent months is likely driven by the do-it-yourself (DIY) investors. In the first five months of the present financial year (FY 2024), net folio additions in direct MF plans (4.5 million) has outpaced that in regular plans (3.9 million), contrary to the trend seen in the previous three six-month periods. The net folio additions in direct plans in the five-month period (April-August 2023) is 40 per cent higher than the total additions made in the previous six month period.
rediffGURU Samkit Maniar answers readers' personal income tax queries.
The contribution from asset management companies (AMCs) has surpassed the Rs 3,000 crore target for the creation of a Rs 33,000 crore backstop facility for debt mutual funds (MFs). The initial corpus for the Corporate Debt Market Development Fund (CDMDF) is nearly Rs 3,100 crore, according to multiple government officials and AMC executives. "The fund is operational now. "The required corpus has been raised by AMCs and the remaining part (Rs 30,000 crore) is in the form of a guarantee from the government which will be activated only in case of a credit event," explained D P Singh, joint CEO and deputy MD, SBI MF.
Riding on the back of fresh inflows into various schemes, the MF industry's AUM totalled Rs 7.20 lakh crore (Rs 7.2 trillion) -- a 24 per cent rise over the previous month, Crisil FundServices said in a report. During July, FIIs invested over Rs 11,600 crore (Rs 116 billion) in Indian equities, while MFs bought Rs 1,825 crore (Rs 18.25 billion) shares, as per data available on the website of Securities and Exchange Board of India.
Mutual funds' average cash holdings in equity schemes topped 6 per cent in February as fund managers went slow on deployment of new inflows on expectations of better buying opportunities amid uncertainties in the market.
IDFC is merging its Portfolio Management Services business with the newly-acquired Standard Chartered Mutual Fund to sell MF products targeting high net worth individuals. The company is also planning products that offer infrastructure as an asset to investors.
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The Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered that Rs 9,122 crore be disbursed within three weeks to the unitholders of Franklin Templeton's six mutual fund schemes which are proposed to be wound up.
UTI Mutual Fund will shortly launch auto sector fund and portfolio management scheme (PMS) even as it forged a tie-up with Corpration Bank to distribute mutual fund schemes through the latter's branch network in the country.
The information and technology (IT) sector, which has been going through a rough patch lately, was among the top draws for equity mutual funds (MFs) in July. MF schemes together invested a net of Rs 1,800 crores in IT stocks last month after pulling out around Rs 700 crore from the sector in June, according to a report by ICICI Securities.
For the first time in a decade, inflows into equity mutual funds (MFs) decoupled from the past performance of the equity market, as investors continued to pour money into the market unperturbed by lacklustre returns.
HDFC Bank, Reliance Industries and ICICI Bank remained among the top mutual fund (MF) buys for the second consecutive month in September. MFs deployed a net of Rs 15,000 crore into these stocks during the two-month period (August-September), revealed Nuvama Alternative & Quantitative Research reports.
In its 59-page order, the capital markets regulator Sebi said that the 10-year restraint period for them would be calculated after taking into account the restraint already undergone by him vide an interim order dated June 17, 2010.
rediffGURU Dev Ashish answers your personal finance and mutual fund queries
'Like every Budget, this time, too, there is chatter around tinkering with the long-term capital gains tax.' 'Investors may not want to jump into the markets until there is clarity on this front.'
