Report card: Best and worst-performing equity schemes in 2016

The year 2016 was a rough one for stock markets. Marked with steep volatility amid sharp corrections with several events — global as well domestic — key share indices saw an almost flat performance throughout the year. Amid this, several equity funds — which are largely international funds — had a phenomenal performance with one-year returns anywhere between 20% and 60%. 

On the contrary, there were funds — largely sector-specific ones — which did badly in 2016. A majority of these funds are either pharmaceutical-centric or information technology (IT) funds. For the year, the category average returns of pharma equity funds were in negative territory to the tune of 11.7% while for IT-related funds returns were 4.7% in the negative zone. 

Two diversified equity funds — Reliance Equity Opportunities Fund and BNP Paribas Long Term Equity Fund — were among the bottom 10 performers with negative returns of 6.67% and 6.62%, respectively. India’s equity mutual funds have continued to see strong inflows over the past two-and-a-half-years. 

Industry executives are hopeful that domestic money will keep flowing into equity schemes as traditional venues of investments are increasingly becoming less attractive. 

(Compiled by Chandan Kishore Kant)