Reliance Mutual Fund Under Performs The Time Periods

Background:

Reliance Capital Limited is the sponsor of Reliance Capital Assets Management Ltd set up in June 1995. Reliance Capital Ltd. is a member of the Reliance Group and has been promoted by Reliance Industries Limited (RIL), one of India's largest private sector enterprises. The fund house manages assets worth Rs 80962.94 crore at end of March 2009.

Reliance Growth Fund (G) an open-ended equity scheme launched in September 1995. The investment objective of the scheme is to achieve long-term growth of capital through a research based investment approach. The minimum investment amount is Rs.5000 and in multiples of Re.1 thereafter. The unit NAV of the scheme was Rs 233.32 per unit as on 13 April 2009.

Portfolio: The total net assets of the scheme increased by Rs 152.02 crore to Rs 3239.85 crore in March 2009.

Reliance Growth Fund (G) took fresh exposure to two stocks in March 2009. The scheme purchased 8.98 lakh units (1.72%) of Financial Technologies (India), 7.32 lakh units (1.47%) of United Spirits in March 2009.The scheme completely exited from Cambridge Solutions by selling 56.00 lakh units (1.44%) in March 2009.

Sector-wise, the scheme took no fresh exposure to any sector in March 2009.Sector-wise, the scheme did not exit completely from any sector in March 2009.

The scheme had highest exposure to Lupin with 21.53 lakh units (4.58% of portfolio size) followed by Reliance Industries with 7.86 lakh units (3.70%), Divis Laboratories with 12.02 lakh units (3.54%) and Jindal Steel & Power with 9.27 lakh units (3.44%) among others in March 2009.It reduced its exposure to State Bank of India by selling 1.98 lakh units to 6.13 lakh units (by 0.68%), Divis Laboratories by selling 1.88 lakh units to 12.02 lakh units (by 0.37%), Jain Irrigation Systems to 21.87 lakh units (by 0.27%) and Bharti Airtel by selling 4025 units to 11.64 lakh units (by 0.16%) among others in March 2009.

Sector-wise, the scheme had highest exposure to Pharmaceuticals - Indian - Bulk Drugs at 8.12% (from 8.47% in February 2009), followed by Banks - Public Sector at 4.90% (5.54%), Computers - Software – Large at 4.19% (4.26%) and Telecommunications - Service Provider at 3.89% (3.94%) among others in March 2009.

Sector wise, the scheme had reduced exposure to Banks - Public Sector to 4.90% (by 0.64%), Pharmaceuticals - Indian - Bulk Drugs to 8.12% (by 0.35%), Plastics Products to 2.31 % (by 0.27%), and Sugar to 1.98% (by 0.08%) among others in March 2009.

Performance: The scheme underperformed the category average over all the time periods.

Over three-month period ended as on 13 April 2009, the scheme posted returns of 14.25% underperforming the Sensex that posted returns of 20.90%. Over 6 month period, the scheme's returns dropped to 3.34% underperforming the Sensex that fell 3.02%.

The returns of the scheme over one year period fell 30.92% underperforming the Sensex that plunged by 30.62%.

ETFs V/s Mutual Funds

You must have heard from people that the gold ETF was the best investment in 2008! Are you aware what a gold ETF is? Let us first know what basically an ETF is.
ETF is the abbreviation for exchange traded fund, a financial instrument that tries to imitate its benchmark index by investing in stocks in the same proportion as that of the benchmark index.
On other hand a mutual fund is a trust that pools the savings of a number of investors and invests the collected money.
You can say that an ETF is similar to an index mutual fund which also invests in stocks in the same proportion as that of the benchmark index. So Nifty BeES ETF by Benchmark Mutual Fund invests in the same stocks as that of its benchmark S&P CNX Nifty Index.
You may be wondering how are ETFs different from mutual funds, as both collect money from investors and invest in scrips or other assets like gold.
The factors in which these two differ from each other are

Low cost:

ETF have lower cost as they are generally passively managed and invest only in index based stocks. They don’t trade, buy or sell stocks frequently, and the proportion for investment in each scrip is normally fixed, based upon the weightage of that scrip in the index.
Thus, ETF requires low management expertise as research and marketing expenses are less.
Mutual Funds on the other hand are more dynamically managed and hence have a higher expense ratio. Fund houses spend a lot of money on research of scrips. They buy and have a tendency to churn the scrips more frequently.
Take this for example Nifty BeES has a cost structure of around 0.50% as compared to 1.25% of ICICI Prudential Index Fund. Apart from management costs, mutual funds also charge entry and exit load which take almost 2% out of your total investments; whereas in ETF, you have to pay only brokerage charge.

Liquidity:
ETFs can be sold or bought like stocks during market hours, unlike mutual funds which can be bought and sold only at the day’s end as per their calculated net asset value (NAV).
To understand the above, lets us assume, if you want to redeem your investment on a particular day for some monetary need and by sheer bad luck the market begins to fall. As ETFs are traded on the markets you can minimize your loss by immediately selling your ETF.
Had you wanted to redeem from a mutual fund you would have had to wait till the end of the trading session for the generation of NAV; by the time the market might have fallen substantially, leading you to suffer a higher loss.

Long-term investor protection:

the stock exchanges, thus Asset Management Company managing the ETF is not involved in the transaction. However, in case of mutual fund, units are purchased and sold by the Asset Management Company.
This may lead to investors suffering if there is a large exit of money from the scheme as was witnessed in many mutual fund schemes during the October-November 2008 period. During the period, long term investors had to suffer, due to large outflow of funds from schemes which led to many fund managers selling their best assets in fire sales.
Thus, ETF protects long-term investors` value as assets are not sold even when there is large selling seen in ETFs.

Low tracking error:
ETFs have very low tracking error, which is the difference between the returns by funds measured against its benchmark index. This is because, ETFs invests in stocks that constitute the benchmark index, in the same proportion as their weightage in the index. Also the gap between ETF`s NAV and market price is less because of arbitrage opportunities which traders take advantage of.
On the other hand, mutual funds are not so keen to invest in stocks in the same proportion of the benchmark index of the scheme, and mostly deviate from the returns posted by the index. Index funds have high tracking error as there is no arbitrage between the funds` NAV and market.
Thus, if you believe that index will gain, have limited funds to invest in stocks, and not comfortable with any particular scrip, then exchange traded fund will be the right investment option.

Source: http://in.reuters.com/article/personalFinance/idINIndia-39097720090417?sp=true