Equity funds add over 4.25 lakh folios in January

Despite the recent slowdown in inflows in equity funds, equity funds have added over 4.25 lakh retail folios in January. This is the highest addition in retail folios in the last three months.

The last time the industry saw such huge addition of folios was in August and September when equity funds added 5.16 lakh and 4.66 lakh retail folios respectively.

With the tax season underway, ELSS funds too saw addition of 1.10 lakh folio in January.  As a result, the total equity folio count increased from 3.47 crore in December to 3.51 crore in January.

Investors increasing appetite for equity is also evident by the growth in ETF folios. SEBI data shows that ETFs, which track equity indices, added 3,500 folios in January, taking the total folio count in this category to 2.64 lakh.

After the changes in tax structure of debt funds, investors are rushing to balanced funds, which added close to 45,000 retail folios in January. The total folio count in this category reached 30 lakh in January.

Apart from equity and balanced funds, debt funds too saw a healthy growth in folios. Debt funds added 1.08 lakh folios in January, mainly due to a slew of FMP launches. The industry launched 20 FMPs which collected Rs. 3,700 crore in January.

Barring gilt funds, Gold ETFs and overseas fund of funds, all other categories saw positive folio growth. All in all, the industry added 7.73 lakh folios in January.

Folio count as on January 2016

Source:SEBI