Small and mid-cap equity funds outshined other schemes in the October-December quarter on higher allocation to industrial products and lower exposure to oil and gas and power sectors, a Crisil report said today.
"Small and mid-cap equity funds, as represented by the Crisil-AMFI Small & Midcap Fund Performance Index, have given the highest returns among equity-oriented funds in almost all timeframes as of end December," it said.
Crisil attributed the good performance of small and mid-cap equity fund to better sector selection, specifically, higher allocation to sectors such as industrial products coupled with lower exposure to oil and gas and power in the latest quarter.
The credit rating agency computed the returns of equity- oriented funds for the latest quarter as well as longer time frames.
The small and mid-cap category emerged as the best performer, beating its large-cap, diversified and ELSS peers, and the category benchmark, CNX Midcap Index over two-year, three-year and five-year periods, it said.
"For the quarter ended December, which saw all equity categories outperform their respective category benchmarks, the Crisil-AMFI Small & Midcap Fund Performance Index generated absolute return of 19.21 per cent, higher than not only the CNX Midcap Index's 15.34 per cent, but also the broader-market barometer CNX Nifty's 9.92 per cent," it added.
At the fund house level, UTI Mutual Fund and Birla Sun Life MF led the tally of top-ranked funds for the December quarter with eight funds each under Crisil Fund Rank 1, followed by ICICI Prudential MF with seven and IDFC MF with five funds, it said.
The latest Crisil ranking covers close to 90 per cent of the average assets under management of open-ended schemes at the end of December.
