It has been a strange year for stock market investors. Earnings growth has been deeply disappointing for the past six or seven quarters. Retail investors, who are mainly invested in smaller stocks and in active funds with small/midcap mandates, may also be losing confidence. Mutual funds tracking smaller stocks have yielded low or negative returns since January this year, and this segment of the market disappointed last year also. Inflows into equity mutual funds eased to Rs 1,311 crore, down 78 per cent in November compared with the previous month. This has been the lowest inflow since mid-2016 and redemptions