Thanks to incessant selling by foreign investors, S&P BSE Sensex cracked nearly 16 per cent in the first six months of this year after hitting a near-term peak of 61,300 in January. However, belying the investors predictions, the market witnessed a sharp recovery in the following months.

In fact, Sensex gained 15 per cent in nearly three months from mid-June.

Long-term investors who spotted the opportunity and invested in the lull period of January-June have accumulated decent gains.

Against this backdrop, we take a look at top five mutual funds (MFs) across four key categories that gained the most since the June 2022 lows. Read on.

Large-cap funds

Large-cap funds manage a massive ₹2.3 lakh crore in investor assets. Excluding the passive MFs such as exchange traded funds and index schemes, there are 30 actively-managed large-cap schemes. The biggest among them are Axis Bluechip, Mirae Asset Large Cap, SBI Bluechip, etc. Notably, these major funds don't figure in the top performing schemes since June lows.

#1 Taurus Largecap - up 26.1 per cent

#2 Nippon India Largecap - up 19.8 per cent

#3 L&T India Large Cap - up 18.6 per cent

#4 Bank of India Bluechip - up 18.3 per cent

#5 IDBI India Top 100 Eqt. - up 17.8 per cent

Here is a table enumerating their short-term as well as one-, and three-year performance. Note that all fund returns are for direct plans only.

If we take 15 per cent return for this period (June low to now) as a broad cut-off for large-cap funds, over 80 per cent of large-cap funds have outperformed. Among the large-cap funds that didn't beat the cut-off are Mirae Asset Large Cap, ICICI Prudential Bluechip and Franklin India Bluechip.

Flexi-cap funds

Next to large-cap funds, another major category of equity mutual funds is flexi-cap funds. There are about three dozen schemes in this category. Similar to that of largecap funds, the biggest schemes of this category, too, don't figure in the top performers list.

#1 Quant Flexi Cap - 24.5 per cent

#2 IDBI Flexi Cap - 22.1 per cent

#3 Taurus Flexi Cap - 21.7 per cent

#4 Motilal Oswal Flexi Cap - 21.2 per cent

#5 Shriram Flexi Cap - 20.1 per cent

Here is a table enumerating their short-term as well as one-, and three-year performance. Note that all fund returns are for direct plans only.

If we consider 15 per cent return for this period (June low to now) as the cut-off, over 90 per cent of flexi-cap funds have outperformed. This number may not be fully representative because flexi-cap funds are free to take exposure to large-cap, mid-cap, and small-cap stocks without any restrictions as they invest across market capitalisation. Some of the flexi-cap funds that didn't beat the cut-off are Kotak Flexicap, HDFC Flexi Cap and UTI Flexi Cap.

Mid-cap funds

The third biggest equity fund category are mid-cap funds. There are about 27 actively managed schemes in this bucket. Mid-cap stocks have performed better than large-cap schemes. In fact, the BSE Midcap index has jumped 20 per cent from June lows.

The top five performers in this category are:

#1 Motilal Oswal Midcap - up 29.3 per cent

#2 Sundaram Midcap - up 24.7 per cent

#3 Franklin India Prima - up 24.2 per cent

#4 Edelweiss Mid Cap - up 23.9 per cent

#5 Quant Mid Cap - up 23.3 per cent

The table given below enumerate their short-term as well as one-, and three-year performance. Note that all fund returns are for direct plans only.

If we consider 20 per cent as the broad cut-off for mid-cap funds during this period, about 67 per cent of the actively-managed category funds have outperformed the BSE Midcap index. Funds like L&T Midcap, ABSL Mid Cap and DSP Midcap couldn’t beat the cut-off.

Small-cap funds

Small-cap funds, too, have witnessed a good growth since June.

The BSE Smallcap index is up 25 per cent, nearly 10 percentage points more than what the Sensex has gained. However, most actively-managed funds of this category have not been able to match the index level gains in this phase.

Here are the top five performers of this category:

#1 HDFC Small Cap - up 23.6 per cent

#2 IDBI Small Cap - up 23.2 per cent

#3 Union Small Cap - up 23.1 per cent

#4 Edelweiss Small Cap - up 22.9 per cent

#5 Nippon India Small Cap - up 22.8 per cent

The below given table enumerates their short-term as well as one-, and three-year performance. Note that the fund returns are for direct plans only.

Some of the laggards of small-cap fund category include the likes of ICICI Pru Smallcap, Kotak Small Cap and Axis Small Cap.

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