When it comes to assessing the overall performance of mutual funds, investors tend to look at the returns delivered in the past few years.
There are several other factors also that play a key role in evaluating the fund’s performance such as reputation of a mutual fund house, fund’s category, investing strategy, ongoing market sentiment, among others. However, past returns – invariably – play a key role in determining whether the fund becomes a hot favourite among investors.
Here we parse through the past three years’ performance of balanced mutual funds to zero in on the ones which successfully managed to beat the benchmark index.
As we can see in the table below, Quant Absolut Fund gave a return of 29.80 percent in past three years, far ahead of benchmark return of 14 percent. HDFC Balanced Advantage Fund gave a return of 17.67 percent, ahead of the benchmark return of 11.73 percent.
At the same time, SBI Conservative Hybrid Fund – Growth gave a return of 10.61 percent nearly three percentage points ahead of the benchmark returns.
Tata Balanced Advantage Fund’s past three-year return was 12.75 percent, marginally ahead of the benchmark return and ABSL Regular Savings Fund gave a return of 9.19 percent
| Balanced mutual fund | 3-year-return (%) | Benchmark index (%) |
| Quant Absolute Fund | 29.80 | 14.00 |
| HDFC Balanced Advantage Fund | 17.67 | 11.73 |
| SBI Conservative Hybrid Fund – Growth | 10.61 | 7.94 |
| Tata Balanced Advantage Fund | 12.75 | 12.29 |
| Aditya Birla Sun Life Regular Savings Fund | 9.19 | 7.81 |
(SMC Weekly update as on Oct 31; AMFI data)
It is worth noting here that the benchmark indices were different for different mutual fund schemes. For Quant Absolut Fund, the benchmark index is CRISIL Hybrid 35+65 Aggressive Index.
For other mutual fund schemes, the benchmark indices are NIFTY 50 Hybrid Composite debt 50:50 Index, NIFTY 50 Hybrid Composite Debt 15:85 Index, CRISIL Hybrid 50+50 Moderate Index and CRISIL Hybrid 85+15 Conservative Index.
About Quant Absolute Fund
The top performing fund as given in the chart above was launched on April 2001 and now has a total fund size of ₹681.15 crore.
The return since inception is 17.20 percent. In other words, an investment of ₹10,000 in April 2001 would have grown to ₹3,00,924 by now, whereas the same investment in Nifty50 would have swelled to ₹2,16,772.
The key portfolio constituents in the scheme include ITC, Ambuja Cements, Adani Ports, NTPC, SBI, L&T, Kotak Mahindra Bank and RIL, among others.
