Rally lures investors to dalal street

MUMBAI: After witnessing a sharp slowdown in investment by small investors in equity schemes offered by mutual funds over the past three months, fund managers said they are seeing renewed interest from retail investors in the last few days. According to them, the strong rally registered by the domestic equity markets after the Union Finance Budget has already started attracting fresh investments from retail investors in the last one week and fund managers believe that this momentum would firm up further in the coming days.

Since December 2015, fresh inflows into equity mutual funds had more than halved when compared to the previous months as volatility in global markets amidst fall in crude oil prices and subdued sentiments in the domestic equities due to weak corporate earnings growth forced investors to adopt a wait and watch approach. Post budget, both the Sensex and Nifty had rallied over seven per cent in just five trading session to become one of the best performing equity markets in the world.

“In the last few months, we have seen a drop in big ticket investments while fresh inflows through the SIP continued,” said S. Krishna Kumar, chief investment officer at Sundaram MF. However, he pointed out that equity schemes have started seeing fresh inflows especially after the Union Budget.