In what is a telling reminder of continued investor apathy towards the equity market, mutual fund equity schemes saw sizeable outflows in the month of August, most in last six months, latest data from mutual fund industry body Amfi show.
This was the third consecutive month of outflow, bringing the net outflows for the year to R6,367 crore. However, the month-end assets for the industry grew about 3%.
The R2,096 crore of outflows in August is the highest since February this year, when equity funds witnessed outflows of R2,680 crore.
Equity funds have seen outflows in seven out of eight months this year.
Besides February and August, outflows in equity schemes were seen in January (R456 crore), March (R196 crore), April (R455 crore), June (R186 crore) and July (R804 crore).
?Investors booked profits last month as the market had shot up. Also, investors waiting on the sidelines could have taken the money off the table,? said Dhruva Chatterji, senior research analyst, Morningstar India.
BSE Sensex gained 1.12% in August and is up 15.5% in the year to date.
The industry?s month-end assets under management (AUM) rose for the second consecutive month at R7.52 lakh crore in August, gaining around 3% or R22,000 crore from the previous month.
The AUM rise was mainly due to inflows into money market/liquid funds, which saw inflows of R14,755 crore. This was the second consecutive month of inflows in the category.
Income funds saw inflows of R7,548 crore in August compared with inflows of R21,670 crore in July.
Despite the run-up in gold prices, investors continued to put money into gold ETFs with net inflows for the month of August totalling R88 crore. Gold ETFs had seen inflows of R95 crore in July.
Modest outflows were seen in Balanced schemes (R158 crore), Gilt (R31 crore), ELSS (R190 crore), other ETFs (R88 crore) and fund of Funds Investing Overseas (R41 crore).
The mutual fund industry has been struggling ever since entry loads were done away with in August 2009.
Equity schemes have seen inflows in only thirteen months after the entry load ban was enforced. In FY12, equity funds saw modest inflows of R122 crore and outflows in six out of 12 months.
