Wednesday, April 1, 2009

ICICI Prud MF Announces NFO Of ICICI Prud Target Returns Fund

ICICI Prudential Mutual Fund has announced the launch of the ICICI Prudential Target Returns Fund, an open ended diversified equity fund on 15 April 2009. The new issue will be open for the subscription till 14 May 2009. The NFO price for the fund is Rs 10 per unit.
Features of the scheme: Investment objective: The investment objective plan is to seeks to generate capital appreciation by investing in equity or equity related securities of large market capitalization companies constituting the BSE 100 index and providing investors with options to withdraw their investment automatically based on triggers for preset levels of return as and when they are achieved.
Investment options: The scheme offers two plans viz. retail and institutional plan I. Retail option will have growth and dividend as sub options with dividend payout and dividend reinvestment facilities available under Dividend sub option. Institutional option I will have only growth sub-option. Retail option with dividend reinvestment facility will be the default option.
Minimum application amount: The minimum investment amount under retail plan is Rs. 5,000 and in multiples of Re 1 thereafter. And under institutional plan I, the minimum investment amount is Rs. 1 lakh and in multiples of Re 1 thereafter.
Minimum target amount: The fund seeks to raise a minimum subscription amount of Rs. 1 crore during its New Fund Offer period.
Asset allocation: The scheme will invest 65-100% in equity and equity related securities with medium to high-risk profile. Up to 35% of total asset will be devoted to debt and money market instruments with low to medium risk.
The investments in ADR/GDR up to 50% of allocation to equity & equity related securities maximum. The scheme may invest in derivatives up to 75% of its net assets of the scheme. Stock lending shall be up to 30% of the net asset of the scheme.
Load structure: Entry load: For retail option, the fund will charge entry load of 2.25% of applicable NAV for an investment amount less than Rs 2 crore. For an investment amount of Rs 2 crore and above, no entry load will be applicable.
While for institutional option I, no entry load will be charged.
Exit Load: For an investment amount of less than Rs 2 crore, if amount sought to be redeemed before 6 months from the date of allotment, 1.5% will be exit load. If the amount sought to be redeemed on or after 6 months but before 12 months from the date of allotment, 1% of applicable NAV should be charged as an exit load. For redemption on or after 12 months, no exit load will be applied.
For investment amount of Rs 2 crore and above, the scheme will not levy exit load. Institutional option I may not charge an exit load.
Benchmark Index: The benchmark index for the scheme is BSE 100 Index.
Fund Manager: Sanjay Parekh will be the fund manager for the scheme.

CRISIL, CNBC-TV18 announce Mutual Fund Award Winners

CRISIL FundServices, in partnership with CNBC-TV18, yesterday presented the CNBC-TV18 – CRISIL Mutual Fund Awards for outstanding mutual fund performance for the year 2008. Birla Sun Life AMC, with 5 awards and 5 nominations, won the prestigious Mutual Fund House of the Year Award for the second year in a row. Birla Sun Life AMC also won the Debt Mutual Fund House of the Year Award while the Equity Mutual Fund House of the Year Award was awarded to DSP BlackRock AMC. The Most Innovative Fund of the Year honour went to UTI’s Wealth Builder Fund-Series II.

According to Mr. S. Venkataraman, Senior Director - Research, CRISIL, “The awards have grown to be an industry benchmark in evaluating performance of mutual fund schemes in India. The selection for the awards are underpinned by CRISIL FundServices’ robust, unbiased, objective and unique Composite Performance Ranking (CRISIL~CPR) methodology. We have always endeavoured to align the award with the changing profile of the industry and the market environment. Accordingly, this year we have introduced three new categories – Most Innovative Fund of the Year, Debt Mutual Fund House of the Year and Equity Mutual Fund House of the Year.”

Commenting on the trends witnessed in the awards this year, Mr. Krishnan Sitaraman, Head – CRISIL FundServices, said, “The year 2008 was very challenging for equity markets, due to which equity mutual funds too were under tremendous pressure. In this backdrop equity funds which performed relatively better are the ones which focused on the basics of good investing - diversification and investing in stocks with good fundamentals.

Also, equity funds with a large cap focus did better than those primarily investing in mid caps and small caps.”On the debt side, the last few months of 2008 saw interest rates falling, resulting in gilt funds and bond funds giving good returns. CRISIL FundServices’ research reveals that funds which had invested in securities with longer duration and focused on maintaining good credit quality of their portfolios did well. The analysis also revealed that, after a long time, debt funds out-performed equity funds, a trend observed during the equity market downturn from early 2000 after the end of the technology led boom.

The Award function held in Mumbai was attended by leaders from various fund houses, luminaries from India's financial services sector including senior regulators, bankers, distributors and analysts.

Sensex to eventually break 8000: Ramesh Damani

Ramesh Damani, Member of the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) feels that the markets will spend some time at the higher end of the range as bear confidence is at a historic high. However, possibility of the market hitting new lows cannot be ruled out, he rues. "But this won’t happen in a hurry,” Damani said. The Sensex, according to him, will eventually break 8,000.
Talking about the impact elections might have on the market, Damani said, the markets could remain volatile during elections and he expects uncertainty two weeks prior and post elections.
However, Damani does not see a bull market for the next five years and expects contraction of economic activity.

Q: What have you made of the last few weeks, where we have had a fairly spectacular and sharp 25% rally?
A: The bad news, of course, is that, it is a bear market rally. The good news is that you can view the market from many prisms; you can view it from earnings, expectations and de-coupling theory. However, if you view it purely from the angle of sentiment, I have never seen the bears more confident in the 25 years that I have been watching the markets. The way they are talking is like Armageddon-2 is going to happen and it is going to happen tomorrow. The market is obliged in that direction. Thus, if I have to make a call, I will say that the market is not going to go back to the bottom of this trading range in a hurry. It is going to spend some time at the higher end of the trading range, maybe even take out 10,500. I just think the confidence in the bears is so supreme that the market will test them also.
Q: Eventually, after the scare that you are predicting for the bears, do you think it will still remain a bear market, in which case the recent lows of 2,500 Nifty still stands under threat of a retest or a breach, or do you think we have passed that fear?
A: Unfortunately no. If you go back and study the evidence of any great bull market in the history of the world, it really makes a bottom in the first year of its lows. There is a very long and very painful period ahead of us. I don’t want to play light on those prospects, because we are still in a bear market and this has also the symptoms of a classic bear market rally, only the small leadership advancing, absolutely giving you no time to think.
Bear markets are very painful, and the market will eventually break the 8,000 barrier. There is a very good chance that it would test and break the lows. But I don’t think it is going to happen in the next one to three months.
Q: You do see it happening at some time in 2009. What makes you less willing to subscribe to the theory that perhaps equity markets, or Indian markets, have seen the worst in terms of a bottom for this year?
A: The theory that the bulls advance to all is that India is different, and that we have a great domestic economy growing—our GDP growth would be somewhere north of 5%. All that is probably true. The problem is that markets don’t change—they are never different.
If you go back and study any of the great bull markets in history, whether it is Japan or the US bull markets in 1968, or Thailand or Taiwan, once that bull market ends, the forces that propelled it higher, end. There is a huge time for the market to regain its old highs.
When I am talking about a new bull market beginning, we have to take out 21,000 to take that seriously. And, that might not happen for another five years, to be optimistic, because that is just the kind of pain that the markets inflict. There will be a whole generation of people who will forget about investing will have to get to that kind of sentiment level.
When this rally happened over the last week, the bulls were supremely confident that the worst was over; the worst is in the prices. On Monday, it was the bears—the market will tend to make both of them complacent before it moves out in either direction.
But if you look at the historical evidence, it is absolutely clear-cut. In fact, there is no dispute in my mind that we are in a bear market and this is a bear market rally. Ultimately, the market will test its lows and break it. It is just not going to do it in a hurry as the bears think.
Q: If you were to look at the market through the prism of economic data, how are you feeling about that? The catalyst, for this bear market rally we have had, was that maybe things were coming into place in the financials maybe the data wasn’t going to be as bad as what we live through in 2008?
A: The data can be looked at so many different ways—You can say that auto sales were up so that is a good indicator of cyclical recovery, so yes the bad news is behind us or the cement prices are up that is a good leading indicator, so yes the economic recovery is ahead of us. But, I can give you equal data to argue the bearish point of view, like you always heard about the first world and the second world and the third world—the first world being of course the nuclear super powers or rich and Western industrialised economies, but you don’t have to look at them any more. You have a country like Britain, which is basically tittering on the edge of insolvency. Therefore, the whole world, in terms of those analyses, looked pretty grim. You are going to have an economic contraction in the world back-to-back the worse economic contraction in the US, liquidity markets have rallied what a lot of analysts are pointing out is that credit markets are still pricing in a very high risk of defaults. Hence, the global economic picture means that the global economy is going to slowdown and that is generally not good for stock markets and besides even if the economy does well, the markets don’t have to do well. There is no law that says if the gross domestic product (GDP) is 6%, the market will perform at 12% or some number like that. Hence, it is wishful thinking to think that the market can go back to 21,000 in one or two years. I would read that as a very small probability of that happening.
Q: So where do you see upsides capped for 2009? What is that point at which the bears start throwing in the towel and say maybe things are changing, and we should not be so complacent about the downside risk in the market, and the point where the bulls start saying that things have turned once again for the mend? Is it 10,000, 11,000 or 12,000, what is the upper limit in your eyes?
A: A few months ago, I would have said 10,500. That was the day the Satyam debacle broke. It was around 10,500. My sense is that the market will take it out and go up to say between a broadband of about 11,500-12,500. If you remember, 12,700 represents the peak it reached in May 2006, before the market had one of those most ferocious bull market falls. So, I would say 12,700, or spikes around that region, would be the higher end of the range. It may never get there. But if it crossed 12,700 in a very decisive manner, you would certainly have to look and say that maybe your analysis needs to be rethought out.
Q: How cautious are you about the outcome of the elections or what gets thrown up in terms of a coalition combination? How material do you think it is for the market’s life?
A: I read a great quote from “The White Tiger”. It says, there are three kinds of fevers to worry about in India – cholera fever, typhoid fever and election fever. And probably, the election fever is the worst.
It is hard to say. But the good news is that the Indian democracy and markets are fairly mature. They will be very volatile around the elections. But ultimately, the market figures out and keeps moving in the direction that it has to.
So, yes, there would be a lot of uncertainty, two weeks before and after the election. But the Indian democracy over a 50-year period, and Indian markets over a 30-year period, have shown themselves to be very resilient. This is a good market with a lot of depth in there. Hence, the market would respond to the kind of cues that we get. If we get a Third Front government, the market would tend to be weak. If you see the Congress or BJP seem within eyeshot of having a majority, the market would respect and react positively to that. I am thrilled to hear the Congress plan and Dr Manmohan Singh saying that he is going to disinvest all the PSUs so that the Indian public can have ownership of the PSUs. That will bring accountability to the sector and give a great opportunity for Indian investors to buy some great companies at what would be very good valuations.


Q: How are you reading the global situation, since you track that closely, this whole optimism in the last few weeks has stemmed from there—first the financial sector then some bits of positive news came out from the US and that unleashed a bit of money into emerging markets (EMs) as well?
Do you think it is a durable turnaround that you are beginning to see out there in the West or it is just a few positive data points which are leading no more than a bear market rally there as well?
A: On January 20, when President Obama was inaugurated, the Dow—which is the oldest, most matured, most widely followed market in the history of Western civilization—was at 9,000. Within the next six weeks, it went to 6,400 - but 2,500 points knock in the Dow after it had fallen 40%, it was clearly vastly oversold. The market gave a good 50% retracement.
If you look back and say what is going to happen in the futures, I don’t see any good economic news lasting and this is going to be a jobless recovery taking place—unemployment is going to trending higher, banks are not going to be in a position to lend; whether they are banks in India, banks in Western, they are all putting the money into T-bills rather than lending out, there is going to be an economic contraction of activity. This whole model that the Western world has built up on terms of easy credit availability that everything is priced by markets, probably will recheck and the first signpost of that will be the G-20 summit that is taking place in London in early April. However, I think, the global economy has enormous challenges and the easy money policy that we followed for the last twenty years has come to an end. Hence, businesses will have to earn a return on capital and that takes a very tough winning away process.


Q: What are you doing right now in the market? You have always been a long-term investor, you like to pick good businesses at reasonable value and many non-index largecaps or midcaps above USD 100 million marketcap are trading at 10% off their peak value in just about 12 months time. Is it time to go out hunting or do you think it will take a very long time for any of these stocks to come back in a meaningful way?
A: I have been hunting, but it has been a very disappointing process. Even in this rally, the midcaps have virtually not moved at all and that is because the investing public is not back in there. They have been so burnt—it is the trading communities, the hedge funds, the domestic institutions and they always tend to buy the 50-100 most liquid stocks. Thus, the B group stocks are still available, still great companies at great prices but we are not seeing any – despite this whole 20% rally, the portfolio of midcap stocks that you might own have barely budged.
But my suggestion to a few investors is that eventually new bull market will start, a lot of the bears also have this feeling that this time it is different and that we are going to rewrite the rules of investment that investing is never going to be the same again and I will respectfully tell them to remember that in the stock market, nothing is different, everything keeps changing all the time but it comes back to the same principles.
Whenever the next bull market starts, it might be years away, these stocks will tend to move before that bull market starts. I think the two sectors which I find vastly unpopular this time are airline sector and oil marketing companies. From Warren Buffet down to the clerk in my office, everyone knows not to invest in airline stocks, the balance sheets are hugely challenged but at some price the bottom of this bear market Jet was at Rs 120 so implied marketcap of about 800 crore which is ridiculous for an airline running 20 years in India. I own a small amount of Jet for disclosure purposes, so I would buy that. Also, oil-marketing companies are extremely unpopular but they offer good, solid businesses that in a more uncertain time would rebound. You want to buy things like Novartis, Ingersoll, which is doing buyback, you can fairly easily predict which companies are going to do this buyback privatisation in the next one to two years. There are some good returns to be made for that and for the rest you have to grin and bear it, there is nothing that says that you allow 20% return every year in the stock market.

Q: What about commodities in that case? They have been a large feeder of this rally that we have seen up to 3,100. Any thoughts on whether you would want to dip your feet into anything over there now?
A: In that case, I’d always wear yellow glasses. The only commodity I am actually really bullish upon is gold. I think it will be a big gainer based on the global economic environment. People tend to think that gold will do well only in an inflationary environment. However, if you read history, it does well in a deflationary environment too, because one of the properties of gold is that it acts as a store of value.
Given the fact that people had a lot of disrespect for paper currencies, for fiat currencies and for stock markets, I think over a period of time, people will shift to gold. It is now in a trading range, consolidating at the higher end. At some point, it would perhaps breakout over USD 1,000-1,030 per ounce and then a new bull market will start in gold. If it does start, it is going to be a very vicious bull market.
Q: Just because of the momentum we had last week, for a lot of people, it seemed like this was going to be the big bear market rally where we would conquer 3,100, do a lot more by way of price appreciation. Do you see that as a likely prospect over the next couple of weeks?
A: I would think so, and I am basing this purely on sentiment. I think the results really—markets will be volatile. However, the market is not going to go down barely because of a bad set of results. I think it is just the sheer sentiment I am finding in bears. Like I told you, they are expecting Armageddon-2 to happen and happen tomorrow.
The market may eventually get where they are saying it would get. I just don’t see that happening over the next month. Therefore, I think, if I was a bear, I would be circumspect about selling. I would not be a very aggressive seller at these points. Sometimes, even in a bear market, you can have a very strong bull market that can extend in duration for a period of time.
My thought process, after looking at the players and listening to everybody, is that we are in such a phase that the market might actually be healthy for the next few weeks and months.




Q: Real estate—a sector that you have never been in love with. Has enough damage been done for you to reconsider your stance on the sector or not quite yet?
A: I think so. I’ve never been in love with it; it’s only that it has just been priced atrociously in the market. I think values are coming down there. Avoid the companies that are leveraged. But, if you can find within that, companies that have good business models, housing at the Rs 20-40 lakh level, I think there are stocks within that sector. I would certainly be a buyer out there.
All I am saying is that, a bear market doesn’t necessarily mean the end of the world. I think there are great opportunities for stock-pickers to buy stocks—to build a portfolio of the future. I don’t like to believe anyone who says ‘this time it is different’. In a bull market they said, this time it is different, India would never go down, India will decouple completely. Now, the bears are saying this in a bear market. I think go back to basics, do your homework, find the principles. The principles of investing don’t change. If they change, they won’t be principles.
Disclosure:
I have a vested interest in whatever we are discussing.




Market downturn dries up ELSS dividend payouts

List of divided declared on ELS schemes in 2008-09:

The stock market carnage has not spared equity linked saving schemes (ELSS), with the dividend declared by fund houses seeing a sharp fall in FY 2008-09 from the previous fiscal. The average dividend declared in FY 2008-09 was 28 per cent as against 44 per cent declared in FY 2007-08.
Twenty three schemes had declared dividend in the previous fiscal ranging between 15 per cent and 200 per cent, while this fiscal this number has come down to 9 schemes declaring dividend from 10 per cent to 50 per cent. Only five fund houses announced divided in 9 ELSS schemes. These include Birla Sun Life MF, HDFC Mutual, ICICI Prudential AMC, Franklin India AMC and Taurus. This is in sharp contract to the earlier year when 17 fund houses declared dividend in 23 ELSS schemes.
In FY 2008-09, Taurus Libra Tax Shield ruled the roost, giving dividend three times at 10 per cent each in December, January and March. HDFC Tax Saver and Birla Sun Life Tax Relief 96 gave highest dividend of 50 per cent in March and June respectively during the current fiscal.
In FY 2007-08, Birla Sun Life Tax Relief 96 declared the highest dividend of 200 per cent while HDFC Tax Saver disbursed 80 per cent dividend. The ex-dividend NAVs for these two schemes stood at Rs 86.74 and Rs 58.092 on March 25, 2008 and March 8, 2008 respectively. The same eroded to Rs 66.86 and Rs 26.155 on June 27, 2008 and March 6, 2009.
Most of the ELSS schemes have not booked any profit and hence they don’t have any surplus income. In such conditions, declaring dividend is nothing but a gimmick to lure investors, fund distributors said.
“Bruised by the tumbling market, investors have already seen huge erosion in their NAVs. Declaring dividend will bring down the NAV further,” said Hiren Dhakan, mutual fund analyst, Bonanza Portfolio.
Vinay Shukla, senior vice president, India Infoline, said, “MFs are guided by the psychology of investors who feel ELSS schemes declaring dividend are only worth investing and performing.”
“Declaring dividend also involves overhead costs, which will directly impact the NAV of a scheme later,” added Shukla.


March redemptions halt bullish AUM numbers’ rally

Mutual fund AUM rose to Rs5 trillion in February from Rs4 trillion in November
Indian mutual funds may have seen an outflow of as much as Rs50,000 crore from their assets under management (AUM) in March under heavy redemption pressure from banks before the end of the fiscal, according to people in the asset management business.
Mutual fund AUM rose to Rs5 trillion in February from Rs4 trillion in November. According to data available with the Association of Mutual Funds of India (Amfi), investments in liquid or money market schemes contributed Rs42,000 crore in January and February alone, accounting for at least 42% of the increase.The run-up in AUM may have been short-lived, according to people in the mutual fund industry who didn’t want to be named.Of the Rs42,000 crore parked in liquid schemes in January and February, at least 95% was invested for the short term by banks, which redeemed money from such funds before Tuesday’s end of fiscal 2009 in order to maintain adequate capital on their balance sheets, these people said.Fixed-income heads across the mutual fund industry and distributors told CNBC-TV18 that as much as Rs50,000 crore had been redeemed.People at one of the country’s large mutual fund houses said banks had redeemed Rs6,000 crore of the Rs8,000 crore they had parked in its liquid funds. More redemptions are not being ruled out, they said.SBI Mutual Fund, too, has witnessed the redemption of Rs3,000-3,500 crore by banks from its liquid schemes, people said.People at UTI Mutual Fund said banks likely pulled out money to the tune of Rs3,500 crore from its liquid schemes. Companies, too, may have withdrawn Rs5,000-6,000 crore in March.“This is a seasonal tendency and is chiefly for tax purposes. The money is kept for short term and will eventually come back into the schemes,” said A.P. Kurian, chairman of Amfi.