MF industry adds 15.7 lakh folios in Feb

The number of new folios remained strong despite the volatility in equity and debt markets. SEBI's latest data shows that mutual fund industry has added 15.7 lakh new folios in February.

A rough calculation indicates that the industry has added an average of 52,000 folios per day in Feb.  This brings the total folio count to nearly 7 crore in Feb 2018.

Within the mutual fund categories, addition of new folios in pure equity, balanced, ELSS, and equity ETF remained robust. Equity funds added 15.3 lakh in Feb despite the budget proposal for the reintroduction of LTCG on equity funds.

Kaustubh Belapurkar, Director -Fund Research, Morningstar Investment Advisor India says that investors have understood that mutual funds is a great investment tool to create wealth in the long term despite LTCG. "In a way, we can say that investors have matured. They are not overtly worried by the short term market volatility. Even after the introduction of LTCG, mutual funds still remain a great investment tool to create wealth. Many existing investors has used this opportunity to further increase their equity exposure. They were sitting on the sidelines waiting for the market to correct," said Kaustubh.

The folio count of pure equity funds increased from 4.1 crore in January to 4.23 crore in February. At the same time, equity funds saw an inflow of Rs.14,683 crore, shows the latest AMFI data.

Although the net inflows in balanced funds witnessed a marginal decline, the category saw an increase in folios. Folios in balanced funds increased by 1.78 lakh to 57.4 lakh.

ELSS funds witnessed an addition of around 2.3 lakh folios and received net inflows of close to Rs.1,585 crore in February. 

Folio count as on February 2018

Source: SEBI