Investors looking to take calibrated exposure to equities can consider buying units of DSP BlackRock Opportunities. The fund has been a consistent outperformer, staying ahead of its peers.

In the last one year, the fund gave a return of 33 per cent, outperforming its benchmark Nifty 500 by a margin of about 3 percentage points. Over the three-year time frame, the margin of outperformance has been wider – it gave annualised returns of about 17 per cent as against 11 per cent for Nifty 500.

Its three-year annualised returns is the highest among its peers — Mirae Opportunities (15.3 per cent) , Kotak Opportunities (14.4 per cent), Tata Equity Opportunities (11.8 per cent) and Franklin India Opportunities (12.2 per cent).

While the fund maintains a multi-cap orientation in portfolio construction, investing in both large-cap and mid-cap stocks, it keeps no ‘value’ or ‘growth’ bias.

Historically, however, it has maintained higher than 65 per cent of its portfolio in large-cap stocks. Currently it has about 70 per cent of its portfolio in large-cap stocks, which makes it a safer bet, under the given market conditions.

On a one-year rolling return basis, it has outdone its benchmark 98.9 per cent of the time in the last three years. Also, it has remained in the top quartile of performance over the long-term time frame, be it over three or five years.

The fund usually restricts cash investments to the extent of 10 per cent of portfolio and doesn’t take cash calls. However, during the crisis times of 2008, its cash holdings had increased to about 28 per cent of portfolio. As of November ‘17, the fund had about 5 per cent of its portfolio in cash and cash equivalents.

About two-and-a- half years back, the fund management changed hands, with Rohit Singhania taking over the reins as fund manager. However, the fund continued to remain the top performer. DSP BlackRock technology.com was merged with this fund about five months back.

DFC Bank, ICICI Bank, SBI, Tata Steel and GAIL were its top five stocks in its portfolio.

The fund is currently overweight on Financials (35 per cent), Construction (11 per cent) and Metals (5 per cent) as compared to the benchmark Nifty 500, while it is underweight on Technology (0 per cent) and FMCG (4 per cent).

Top performers

HDFC Bank, Tata Steel, SBI, Reliance Industries and GAIL were top return contributors to the fund. In contrast, Sun Pharma and Tata Motors were a drag on its portfolio. In the last one year, it got into the counters of Mahindra and Mahindra and Edelweiss Financial Services while completely offloading the stocks of Infosys, Tech Mahindra and Lupin.

During the period, it also reduced exposure to public sector banks, Indian pharma stocks as well as that of commercial vehicles while increasing exposure to finance & investments, private sector banks and passenger cars.

Related Topics