Mid-cap mutual funds outperform the large cap ones

MUMBAI: With the mid-cap stocks doing fairly better on the bourses than their large cap peers in the first quarter of the current calendar year, the associated mid-cap category of mutual fund schemes have clearly turned out to be the show stoppers for the quarter ended March ‘2012. The mid and small cap category of funds have in fact delivered an average of 3.5% returns as against –1.25% average returns posted by the large cap category of schemes in the past 6 months.

An ETIG performance analysis of all mutual fund schemes, across various categories of equity schemes reveals that the almost all of the top-quartile performers, for the first quarter of the year 2012, belong to the mid and small cap category of funds.

The ETIG Mutual Fund Tracker analysis the performance of all MF schemes on risk-return adjusted parameters and rates them based on their performance in five grades – Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze and Lead. Interestingly, for the quarter ended Mar ’12, almost 90% of Platinum rated diversified equity schemes are factually the schemes that invest a high percentage of their portfolios in the mid and small cap companies.

Some of these top-performing schemes include Magnum Emerging Businesses, ICICI Pru Discovery, Canara Robeco Emerging Equities, Reliance Equity Opportunities, Magnum Global, DSPBR Micro-cap, Sundaram Select Mid-cap, Tata Dividend Yield, HDFC Mid-cap Opportunities, Sahara Mid-cap, UTI Master Value, Franklin India Prima, Birla SL Mid-cap, Birla SL Dividend Yield Plus, Religare Mid & Small Cap, UTI Mid-cap and Religare Mid-cap among others.