The country's six largest smallcap schemes would require more than 20 days to liquidate half of their holdings, despite most of them maintaining high cash levels and having considerable exposure to more liquid largecap stocks, stress tests conducted by fund houses reveal. For midcap funds, the time required to sell half of the assets of the top six schemes varies between seven and 34 days, according to disclosures made by asset management companies. The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) had called for such tests in the face of strong inflows into smallcap and midcap funds, despite concerns over high valuations, to keep investors better informed.
There was no smooth surge in middle class prosperity for foreign businesses to tap into because of the Indian economy was mismanaged, argues Debashis Basu.
Increasing awareness about mutual funds, ease of transactions through digitisation and sharp surge in equity markets have aided asset management companies to add a staggering 3.17 crore investor accounts in 2021-22, with experts saying the trend is likely to continue this fiscal as well. This was a significant rise from 2020-21 when 81 lakh accounts (or folios in mutual fund parlance) were opened, data with the Association of Mutual Funds in India (Amfi) showed. The ongoing financial year too appears to be promising in terms of folios as increase in investor accounts will enable people to move beyond fixed deposits and savings accounts, said Priti Rathi Gupta, founder of LXME, a financial platform for women.
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Analysts believe that investors should look at stocks that hit 52-week lows only if they have a dividend paying track record, are debt-free and have sound fundamentals.
IndusInd International Holdings chairman Ashok Hinduja on Tuesday announced the acquisition of Reliance Capital, completing the three-year-long resolution process of the debt-ridden company. IndusInd International Holdings Ltd (IIHL) has transferred the bid amount to the escrow account of the lender, and the takeover of the management from the Administrator will happen on Wednesday.
The recently-created flexi-cap fund category is emerging as the hottest segment in the Rs 11-trillion equity mutual funds (MFs) space. Buoyed by the success of ICICI Prudential Flexicap Fund, other MFs are lining up new fund offerings (NFO) in this segment. Industry players say the flexi-cap category could emerge as the biggest segment in the equity MF space. Recently, ICICI Pru Flexicap's NFO collected a record Rs 10,200 crore.
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Inflows into gold exchange-traded funds (ETFs), which manage a total of Rs 37,390 crore, have surged sharply in recent months. This trend is likely to continue, especially after the reintroduction of long-term capital gains tax (LTCG), which is likely to attract smart money into mutual fund offerings amid a robust outlook for the yellow metal. Smart money, also known as opportunistic flows, refers to strategic investments that are generally of a short-term horizon.
The joint venture of Jio Financial Services and BlackRock to foray into India's asset management space could be disruptive but not disastrous for incumbent industry players, analysts said on Thursday. As an investment strategy, analysts suggest investors stay put in shares of those AMCs that consistently improve business metrics, and where market capitalisation-to-asset under management (AUM) valuation is not stretched. However, growth expectations of incumbent players may get trimmed in the medium-to-long term, analysts said, once the Jio-BlackRock JV unveils its plans, discounting the looming challenge as significant enough to dent their profitability.
Experts say the impact on the schemes' NAVs may vary in the coming days, depending upon how fund houses treat the developments on VIL and whether there are any further rating downgrades or credit events.
Invest only if you wish to go overweight on the sector.
The top 10 fund houses are slowly losing ground to their smaller peers, even as they continue to hold the lion's share in the total assets under management (AUM) of the mutual fund (MF) industry, according to an analysis of the quarterly AUM for the past six years. These fund houses had an average AUM of Rs 38.8 trillion in the third quarter (Q3) of 2023-24, which is 79 per cent of the total industry AUM of Rs 49.2 trillion. The share has come down steadily since Q3 of 2019-2020, when the share stood at 84 per cent.
After a short-term blip, mutual funds (MFs) are back to adding new systematic investment plan (SIP) investors at a record high pace, which was seen during the financial year 2021-22 (FY22). During the first six months (H1) of this financial year (FY24), MFs have added a net 77 million SIP accounts compared to 56 million during the same period of FY23. The net additions this year are a tad higher than the 76.5 million additions in H1 of FY22.
The net inflows into active equity mutual fund (MF) schemes registered more than a twofold month-on-month rise in August, crossing Rs 20,000 crore, the highest in five months. This rise in net inflows was boosted by an 18 per cent growth in gross investments, driven by a record Rs 15,800 crore inflow through the systematic investment plan (SIP) route and Rs 5,000 crore collected by seven new fund offers (NFOs) in the active equity space, reveals data released by the Association of Mutual Funds in India (Amfi). Moreover, redemptions moderated in August, declining by 19 per cent to Rs 24,580 crore, after staying elevated in the previous three months owing to profit booking.
'It makes sense to have gold in one's portfolio keeping the political and economic risks of 2024 in mind.'
Blackstone, KKR, and Bain Capital, among others, are in the race for its general insurance arm, and Bandhan Bank, Bain, and Dabur Investments have shown interest for RCap's 51 per cent stake in the life insurance business.
The key assets put on the block include its entire stake in Reliance General Insurance Company, the third-largest private sector insurer, and a 49 per cent stake in Reliance Nippon Life Insurance, a joint venture with Nippon Life, which is among the top five private-sector insurance companies.
Investors must adopt a balanced approach, incorporating both styles in their portfolios.
Brokerages have lowered the price targets of asset management companies (AMCs) since they failed to beat revenue growth expectations in the January-March quarter (fourth quarter, or Q4) of 2022-23 (FY23). The regulator's plans to lower the fee charged by AMCs also added to concerns. While HDFC AMC and Nippon Life India AMC reported modest growth in revenue from operations in Q4FY23, UTI AMC and Aditya Birla Sun Life AMC delivered yet another weak quarter.
The Covid winter seems to be finally ending for debt-oriented mutual fund (MF) schemes as interest rates peak, especially for those that invest in shorter-maturity papers. In the past two months, shorter-horizon debt schemes - ultra-short, low-duration, and money-market - have together raked in net inflows of Rs 48,000 crore, the highest for two months since April-May 2021. These schemes invest in shorter-maturity papers ranging from three months to a year.
Retail investors now own a larger share of smallcap companies than they did a year ago, thanks to their conviction in mutual fund (MF) schemes focused on this segment. Data from Capitaline shows that MFs' average holding in the National Stock Exchange Nifty Smallcap 250 Index stood at 9 per cent at the end of the October-December quarter of 2023-24 (FY24), up from 7.76 per cent in the same quarter of 2022-23.
Omkeshwar Singh, head, Rank MF, a mutual fund investment platform, answers your queries.
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Investors may take a 5 to 10 per cent exposure to silver. 'Have a long-term investment horizon when investing in silver ETFs to ride out short-term market fluctuations.'
'Any normalisation exercise will bring its share of volatility.'
'The problem is that the bubble may not only be in valuations, but also in investors' minds.'
HDFC Bank's latest shareholding data showed that the room for foreign investment has fallen just 5 basis points short of the threshold set by Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) to fully include the stock in its indices. Currently, the index provider has applied an adjustment factor of 0.5 since the foreign room is less than 25 per cent. Removal of the adjustment factor will result in inflows of a massive $4.8 billion (Rs 40,000 crore) into HDFC Bank, according to Brian Freitas, a New Zealand-based analyst with Periscope Analytics.
New investors should gradually build a 5 to 10 per cent allocation to gold.
Nikunj Saraf, Vice President Choice Wealth, answers your queries.
Since infrastructure projects have long gestation periods, investors need to enter them with a long horizon of at least 10 years.
Ask rediffGURU and PF and MF expert Janak Patel your mutual fund and personal finance-related questions.
The rally in silver may continue if the global economic recovery remains on course.
rediffGURU Sunil Lala answers your personal finance-related queries.
The asset manager is yet to resolve the impasse surrounding the payment of pension to its erstwhile employees who had opted for voluntary retirement in 2003.
Goldman Sachs expects gold to reach $3,150 per ounce in the international market by December 2025, up around 19.1 per cent from its current level of $2,645, according to a recent report in Business Standard. Domestically, gold is trading at Rs 76,018 per 10 grams after delivering a remarkable 21.9 per cent return in the past year.
The IPO is an offer for sale of 38 million shares by SBI, BOB, LIC, PNB and T Rowe Price. Barring T Rowe and PNB, the others are selling stake to comply with Sebi norms.
The 2023-24 (FY24) July-September quarter (second quarter, or Q2) proved to be a mixed period for asset management companies (AMCs). While the two largest listed AMCs, HDFC and Nippon, reported robust growth in both revenue and profits, the other two, Aditya Birla Sun Life and UTI, experienced profit declines. HDFC AMC reported an 18 per cent year-on-year increase in Q2 revenue to Rs 765 crore, while Nippon's revenue rose 15 per cent to Rs 475 crore.
At a time when exchange-traded funds (ETFs) were unloading Jio Financial Services from their portfolios, some active fund managers were placing large bets on the demerged financial services arm of Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL), a report by Nuvama Alternative & Quantitative Research shows. Motilal Oswal Mutual Fund and Quant Mutual Fund were the top MF buyers of the stock in August. They bought around 60 million shares each, together investing around Rs 2,800 crore.
