EQUITY FUNDS BUOYANT

Equity funds have continued their buoyant run in the quarter ended September 2014, riding on small and mid-cap stocks, according to Crisil data. Small and midcap funds were in the best performing category, with the Crisil-AMFI Small & Midcap Fund Performance Index delivering highest returns in all time frames ended September 30, 2014, a Crisil release said here today. The category delivered absolute returns of 7.74 per cent for the quarter, compared to the Crisil-AMFI Equity Fund Performance Index's 4.39 per cent and the CNX Nifty's 4.64 per cent. As on September 30 too, the category gave an impressive 50.07 per cent as the CNX Midcap Index and the CNX Small Cap Index delivered 41.47 per cent and 45.27 per cent, respectively, compared to the CNX Nifty's 26.35 per cent, the release said. Across equity categories, funds with higher exposure to small and mid-cap stocks fared better than their peers. For instance, Crisil Fund Rank 1s (top 10 percentile of all ranked schemes) of small and midcap category had 89 per cent exposure to small and mid-cap stocks compared with 79 per cent of Crisil Fund Rank 5 peers (bottom 10 per cent of all ranked schemes. Even in the diversified and large cap categories, exposure to small and midcap stocks in Crisil Fund Rank 1 funds of large cap and diversified category increased gradually from 15 to 22 per cent and 36 to 40 per cent respectively during the period between January 2014 and September 2014, the release said. At the fund house level, UTI Mutual Fund led the tally of top-ranked funds for the quarter with ten funds in Crisil Fund Rank 1, followed by Birla Sun Life Mutual Fund, ICICI Prudential Mutual Fund and Reliance Mutual Fund with five funds each, the release said. The latest Crisil MF Ranking covers close to 90 per cent of average assets under management of open ended schemes at the end of September 2014. Unlike most other ranking models, which are based purely on returns or net asset value (NAV), the ranking uses a combination of net asset value (NAV) and portfolio-based attributes for evaluation. This provides a single-point analysis of mutual funds, taking into consideration key parameters like risk-adjusted returns, asset concentration, liquidity, asset quality and asset size. The rankings also include categories that focus specifically on long-term consistency in performance. The ranks are assigned on a scale of 1 to 5, with Crisil Fund Rank 1 indicating 'very good performance'. In any peer group, the top 10 percentile of funds are ranked as Crisil Fund Rank 1 and the next 20 percentile as Crisil Fund Rank 2.