Top Portfolio Managers Return Best Gains In 15 Months

India’s top portfolio managers returned best gains in 15 months as equity markets rebounded from February lows.

The top 50 portfolio management firms with assets of over Rs 1,11,400 crore gave an average return of 6.5 percent over the previous month in March, according to the data disclosed to the market regulator.

So far in 2019, the top portfolio managers returned average gains of 1.7 percent even as their assets—about 70 percent of the investments managed by 50 out of 332 such firms—increased nearly 9 percent.

This was the best March in three years for India’s equity benchmarks. The S&P BSE Sensex and NSE’s Nifty 50 gained 7.82 percent and 7.7 percent, respectively, recovering from the lows in February. The NSE Midcap 100 rose 9.19 percent and the broader NSE 500 gained 7.9 percent.

Portfolio managers have managed to outperform the Sensex on an average only five times in the last 15 months. Still, only 14 of the 50 portfolio managers tracked by BloombergQuint managed to beat the benchmark last month.

Fund Flows

Motilal Oswal Asset Management Co. Ltd. received over Rs 1,202 crore from individual investors, the highest among its peers.

Portfolio managers also got close to Rs 4,619 crore in net inflows from foreign institutional investors, with ASK Investment Managers Pvt. Ltd. getting the bulk of it. Foreign investors, according to data on NSDL website, ploughed nearly Rs 40,102 crore into the Indian stock market in March.

The top 10 portfolios garnered a chunk of the fresh inflows. At the end of March, four portfolio managers had assets of Rs 14,000 crore ($2 billion) or more.

Here’s how the top 50 portfolio managers performed in March.