The Hindu Business Line : Mutual funds performance shows mixed trend

Exactly six months after the stock market crashed in May, a curious trend has emerged in the realm of mutual funds: Two categories of sector funds have proved to be the best performers, while two others have turned out to be the worst.

Banking and technology funds, each with an average of well over 13 per cent, are now the top draws in the performance sweepstakes.

Funds dedicated to FMCG and pharma are relatively quite inferior, with negative returns of 7.17 per cent and 8.27 per cent respectively.

Best of the lot

Banking funds managed by UTI MF and Reliance MF are the two best performers for the six-months period ending November 14.

UTI MF's Banking Sector Fund is clearly the leader in this space, with more than 30 per cent to its credit in the last one year, according to Value Research.

Both funds, as sources point out in reference to developments in the banking sector, have managed to leverage on the turnaround that bank stocks, especially the public-sector variants, have lately recorded, a trend that has been reflected well in the banking index.

The FMCG funds — offered by Franklin Templeton, SBI and Prudential ICICI — in comparison do not have much to offer, despite the performance reported in recent times by leading companies like Hindustan Lever, it is pointed out.

It may be mentioned here that all three have the same year of inception, 1999.

Other Funds

The past six months have actually hit pharma funds hard, relegating them to the very last slot.

There are nearly half a dozen of these; some were launched in 1999 as well.

Reliance MF and JM MF had come out with their products in 2004.

Like pharma and FMCG, auto sector funds too do not have much to show for themselves.

Their average six-month tally is a negative 3.7 per cent, which makes them the third-worst group of performers.

Considering their one-year scores, the funds that have topped each category are Reliance Pharma (38.24 per cent), Prudential ICICI FMCG (38.41 per cent) and JM Auto Sector Fund (30.33 per cent).

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