The surprise is the greatest in the balanced funds category where the high profile and high performance Alliance 95 fund has been pushed to the fourth spot this time though it still figures amongst the top five balanced schemes. A look at the returns under the various categories shows that while the private sector players may have been in the limelight with their aggressive returns in a rising market, it is the public sector managed funds which show a better performance in the bear market. Aggressive posturing towards technology brought in the profits when the going was good. But the same heavy exposures brought down the NAVs when the going got tough for the technology stocks. However, factors like a smaller fund size, negligible fresh inflows and considerations of portfolio quality have take some sheen off both the equity and debt schemes of public sector and lesser visible fund schemes.
Collections show a mixed picture.
While the gross collections show a healthy month on month picture, the net collections tell the true tale. The short terminism of even the supposedly risk averse mutual fund investor is evident from the figures. A cursory look at the sales and redemption figures released by AMFI reveals a curious correlation of sales and redemptions. From the figures one can observe that an increase in sales is accompanied by higher redemptions and a decrease in sales by lower redemptions. The conclusion, at every rise one set of investors walks out, while another walks in attracted perhaps by the returns recorded in the past.