Category: Investing Insight

Investing insight to make you a better investor.

Comparing: ICICI Prudential Corporate Bond Fund

We ran the Fund Comparison tool to get an idea of how the ICICI Corporate Bond fund stood relative to its peers. Here are some quick takes.

Outperformed GSecs

Since 2013-01-01, IICICI Prudential Corporate Bond Fund has returned a cumulative 14.51% vs. GSEC SUB 3-8’s cumulative return of 10.21%.

ICICI Prudential Corporate Bond Fund vs GSEC SUB 3-8

Outperformed Principal Debt Opportunities Fund

Since 2012-01-02, ICICI Prudential Corporate Bond Fund has returned a cumulative 25.68% vs. Principal Debt Opportunities Fund’s cumulative return of 24.74%. But ICICI had a deeper drawdown in 2013.

ICICI Prudential Corporate Bond Fund Drawdowns:

icici drawdown

Principal Debt Opportunities Fund Drawdowns:

principal drawdown

Outperformed UTI Gilt Advantage Fund

Since 2013-01-01, ICICI Prudential Corporate Bond Fund has returned a cumulative 14.51% vs. UTI – GILT ADVANTAGE-LONG TERM’s cumulative return of 12.88% while having a shallower drawdown in 2013: -5.33% vs. -8.18%

Conclusion

The ICICI Prudential Corporate Bond Fund could be attractive to investors looking to benefit from corporate credit improving on the back of a recovering economy and riding the RBI’s expected rate cuts coming down the pike.

You can run the comparison tool here: FundCompare
 
 
 

Please don’t treat the information here as investment advice.
However, if you want advice on investing in mutual funds, please get in touch with Shyam.
You can either WhatsApp him or call him at 080-2665-0232.
He is an AMFI registered IFA who can advice you on ICICI Pru, UTI and Birla Sun Life funds.

Can you beat a rat at trading?

From rattraders.com:

Rats are being trained to become superior traders in the financial markets. Our subjects [rats] learn to recognize patte[r]ns in historical stock and futures data as well as generating trading signals. We provide solutions for tick based trading data and day based data. RATTRADERS rats can be trained exclusively for any financial market segment. They outperform most human traders and represent a much more economic solution for your trading desk.

Kid you not!

Read the whole thing here.

Quantitative Comparison of Mutual Funds

How do you compare two Mutual Funds and what should be the basis for such a comparison? There is the question of returns, obviously. But higher returns can be achieved by taking on more risk. And then there’s the question of draw-downs. What were the periods of bad performance and how long did it take the asset manager to make up for those losses? How do you compare risk-adjusted returns of two funds? What if you want to compare returns to whatever benchmark index you wanted?

Mutual Fund Comparison Tool

You can compare over 800 funds to each other and any benchmark index you choose. For example, are you confused between ICICI Top 100 and DSP BlackRock Top 100? Punch it in and hit compare.

Since 2008-01-01, ICICI’s Top 100 Fund has returned a cumulative 71.64% vs. BlackRock’s Top 100’s 59.49%.

And as you can see from the wealth chart below, BlackRock’s under-performance has been recent.

icici dsp top 100

However, during the depths of the 2008 crisis, BlackRock managed to go down 51.73% vs. ICICI’s 55.66% and spent 632 days in the red vs. ICICI’s 656 days.

Now, how about comparing ICICI’s Top 100 vs. their own Top 200?

Since 2008-01-01, ICICI Top 100 has returned a cumulative 71.64% vs. Top 200’s cumulative return of 48.57%. And the Top 200 fund really shit the bed during 2008.

icici 200

Confused between value funds and midcap index funds? Do famous managers live up to their reputations?

Since 2010-01-04, PPFAS Long Term Value Fund has returned a cumulative 50.62% vs. BSE MID CAP’s cumulative return of 44.71%. And the fund’s worst period was between 2013-08-28 and 2013-10-11, where it lost -5.84%.

Go ahead, check out the tool: FundCompare
 
 
 

Please don’t treat the information here as investment advice.
However, if you do want advice on investing in mutual funds, please get in touch with Shyam.
You can either WhatsApp him or call him at 080-2665-0232.
He is an AMFI registered IFA who can advice you on ICICI Pru, UTI and Birla Sun Life funds.

Institutional Investing Trends

A quick update to our II Trend report from last month.

Foreign Institutional Investors keep the faith

FII invested $1742.07 million in debt vs $1221.89 million in equities so far in Septmeber.

fii-investments.2012-01-01.2014-09-15

fii-investments-equities.2012-1-1.2014-09-15

Domestic Institutionals were obsessed with debt

In September, DIIs invested Rs 20,379.6 cr in debt vs. -310.5 cr in equity.

dii-investments.2012-01-01.2014-09-15

dii-investments-equity.2012-1-1.2014-09-15

dii-investments-debt.2012-1-1.2014-09-15

A trade for everyone

Not sure what I like better – debt or equity. Debt investors will benefit from the falling interest rate environment in AAA paper and shrinking defaults in sub-primes. Equity investors will benefit from improving balance-sheets and an improving demand-side equation. Stay tuned…

Keynes’ key to successful investing: He abandoned forecasting

Read an interesting article in the FT by Tim Harford about forecasting. Was hit by a couple of “aha moments”.

First:

Keynes’s track record over a quarter century running the discretionary portfolio of King’s College Cambridge was excellent, outperforming market benchmarks by an average of six percentage points a year, an impressive margin.

The secret to Keynes’s profits is that he abandoned macroeconomic forecasting entirely. Instead, he sought out well-managed companies with strong dividend yields, and held on to them for the long term. Keynes, the most influential macroeconomist in history, realized not only that such forecasts were beyond his skill but that they were unnecessary.

And here’s the other gem:

Most forecasters aren’t actually seriously and single-mindedly trying to see into the future. If they were, they’d keep score and try to improve their predictions based on past errors. They don’t.

This is because their predictions are about the future only in the most superficial way. They are really advertisements, conversation pieces, declarations of tribal loyalty…

Read the whole thing: How to see into the future