Mutual funds' large-cap inclusion candidates 'under-owned', shows analysis

The mutual fund (MF) industry body, Amfi, will soon issue a fresh list of stocks ranked on the basis of their average market cap for the second half of 2021. The top 250 stocks in the list becomes the large-cap universe for the domestic MF industry.

Based on the price changes between July 1 and November 26, Mindtree, SRF, Mphasis, IRCTC, and Tata Power are five of the nine stocks pegged to graduate from mid-caps to large-caps. An analysis done by Sriram Velayudhan, vice president, Alternative Research, shows these stocks are largely under-owned by equity schemes in the large-cap, large- and mid-cap and multi-cap categories.

All these are actively-managed schemes, where investment decisions happen at the discretion of the fund manager—unlike passive schemes where they are pegged to the underlying index.

However, there is a high possibility that many of the nine stocks will see buying by large-cap focused schemes, say analysts.