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Monday 23 January 2012

Debts Funds: Their time has come


The expectation that interest rates in India will stabilize and then subside over the first half of calendar year 2012, has given rise to a good opportunity for risk averse investors to invest in debt funds. Not only risk averse investors, but also people who are usually fully invested in equities, would do well to put some of their money in them.


Historical Returns
In the past,October 2008 to January 2009, when RBI cut the Repo rate by 3.5% from 9% to 5.5% with WPI inflation trending down from 11% to 1%. The Gilt-Medium and Long Term category funds appreciated to 19% compounded return while Income Category increased by 11%.


My Personal Bets
My recent additions in this category are Pru ICICI Gilt Fund and Birla Sun Life Dynamic Bond Fund (G) in these two categories. I expect the gilt fund to do better than the income one, and so have a 60-40 split between them. Return expectation is about 12-14% in a year's time.

8 comments:

  1. Hi,
    Can we buy it like equity
    I mean I tried buying on sharekhan and i got following list

    ICICI BANK LIMITED 532174
    ICICI PRUDENTIAL MUTUAL FUND- ICICI PRUDENTIAL FIXED MATURITY PLAN - SERIES 53 -3 YEARS PLAN A-CUMULATIVE 19704
    ICICI PRUDENTIAL MUTUAL FUND - ICICI PRUDENTIAL FIXED MATURITY PLAN - SERIES 53 -3 YEARS PLAN A-DIVDEND 19703
    ICICI PRUDENTIAL MUTUAL FUND-ICICI PRUDENTIAL GOLD EXCHANGE TRADED FUND 19679
    ICICI PRUDENTIAL MUTUAL FUND-ICICI PRUDENTIAL GOLD EXCHANGE TRADED FUND 533244


    Where is ICICI Prud GILT

    Regars
    Sameer

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. If you are using Sharekhan, pick "ICICI Pru" from the fund house drop down, pick Fund Type as "Gilt". You will see the "ICICI Prudential Gilt Fund Investment Plan - Growth [PI014]" option. Similarly, for BSL.

      Delete
  2. Hi Abhishek,
    thanks
    do gilt funds hold only indian government securities OR even foreign government securities??

    If later then there must be forex issue.

    Regards
    Sameer

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Only Indian, of varying maturities. So, no forex implications here. The money will be made on trading (selling) high yield securities when the rates go down.

      Delete
  3. Hi Abhishek,

    Can you share the reason for selecting Pru ICICI Gilt Fund?
    Birla Sun Life Govt Securities fund is the highest rated fund in this category.

    Thanks,
    Thomas

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Pru ICICI is a very good fund house with respect to debt funds. Perhaps the best. The holding in this fund is of very high quality GOI securities. Also, since I am investing in BSL in their bond fund, I am sort of diversifying fund-house risk by selecting a different fund houses. If you are comfortable with BSL, go ahead.
      The idea is that debt funds are likely to do very well in the near future and you should have some skin in that game.

      Delete
    2. Thanks a lot Abhishek for your insights. I had planned to wait a while to see how the inflation figure looks. Looks like it is coming down and there is a good chance that RBI will bring down the interest rates. So have decided to take plunge.

      Delete
    3. Interestingly, when the interest rates do actually come down, the interest rate sensitive stocks would start outperforming. So, maybe some banking stocks along with bank FDs and gilt funds would be a good choice!

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