The gatekeepers at mass-market equity funds have had to dig deep to manoeuvre their portfolios through these trying conditions. The growth-driven style tilt favoured by many of these seasoned practitioners faced the tempest of the market’s swing towards value. Even as conditions continued to be far from conducive, they have drawn on years of experience to hold their nerve. In this year’s ET Wealth-Morningstar Fund Manager Rankings, we tell the tales of some of these market mavens who have not wavered from their paths and focused on making their portfolios resilient for the years to come. These individuals rank among the top money makers for ensuring healthy outcomes for investors over the long run. Our study looks at the five-year track record of equity schemes and identifies the best performers across three distinct categories on the basis of risk-adjusted returns.
The fund managers insist that a growth-bias will deliver superior outcomes in a market like ours. While multiples for this basket have been pegged back amid recent market volatility, they are adamant that business models are not broken and remain on a strong footing to weather turbulences. Yet, even as many are comfortable sitting on the ‘growth’ side of the fence, they acknowledge the need to be responsive to changing market realities and have made subtle changes to give their funds an edge.
THE TOP WEALTH CREATORS OF 2022
LARGE CAP
1.SHRIDATTA BHANDWALDAR:Canara Robeco Mutual Fund
2.GAURAV MISRA:Mirae Asset Global Investment
3.SHREYASH DEVALKAR:Axis Mutual Fund
4.SWATI KULKARNI:UTI Mutual Fund
5.HARISH KRISHNAN:Kotak Mutual Fund
MID & SMALL CAP
1.ANIRUDDHA NAHA:PGIM India Mutual Fund
2.ANUPAM TIWARI:Axis Mutual Fund
3.SHREYASH DEVALKAR:Axis Mutual Fund
4.SAMIR RACHH:Nippon India Mutual Fund
5.PANKAJ TIBREWAL:Kotak Mutual Fund
FLEXI CAP
1.RAJEEV THAKKAR:Parag Parikh Mutual Fund
2.ANIRUDDHA NAHA:PGIM India Mutual Fund
3.SHRIDATTA BHANDWALDAR:Canara Robeco Mutual Fund
4.SHREYASH DEVALKAR:Axis Mutual Fund
5.NEELESH SURANA:Mirae Asset Global Investment
HOW WE RANKED THE FUND MANAGERS
Universe of funds
Our study is restricted to open-ended, actively managed, diversified equity funds segregated into three distinct categories— large cap, multi cap (includes flexi cap, large-and-mid- cap, focused and ELSS) and mid/small cap—as per Morningstar India classification. Schemes with a corpus of at least Rs.200 crore were considered. No index, thematic, sector or balanced funds were considered for evaluation.
Time period
The study is based on the performance of funds managed between 1 January 2018 and 31 December 2022. Experience & AUM criteria Only funds managed continuously for the five-year period under study were considered, with the exception of fund managers who have up to a four-month gap between two stints, or exited within four months before the end of the study period. Track record only for completed months considered. For a fund to qualify, the fund manager needed a minimum two-year track record with that fund as a lead manager. The study was restricted to fund managers cumulatively managing an AUM of at least Rs.500 crore, across all qualifying funds. Only primary fund manager considered as a manager for the fund.
Risk and returns
After shortlisting the fund managers, the aggregate returns generated by each fund manager were calculated over the five-year period for all the funds managed by him which satisfied the qualifying criteria. The returns were then adjusted for risk. This is to account for the degree of risk taken by the fund manager to generate the return. To get the risk-adjusted score, the asset-weighted monthly returns of all the funds satisfying the above mentioned criteria were calculated.
Weighing scheme performance by its corpus size helps give due importance to the size of each fund. Then, the annualised geometric mean for the five-year period was calculated to arrive at the annualised five-year returns. Further, the annualised standard deviation of the monthly asset-weighted returns was calculated. The final risk-adjusted return was calculated by deducting risk-free return— return of FBIL MIBOR Overnight—from the annualised geometric returns generated by each fund manager, and dividing these by the respective standard deviation.