Industry adds 11.50 lakh folios in October – Retail investor belief in India growth story continues

The latest SEBI data on MF industry folios shows that the industry added 11.60 folios in October 2018.

As the equities wobbled, investors jumped into the markets with the hope of benefitting from the correction. A few IFAs shared that they have been telling their clients to increase their investment in equities.

This is reflected in the folio numbers. Equity schemes have added 8.78 lakh folios last month. If we include equity, balanced and ELSS then the number of folios in equity funds went up to 10.6 lakh. This effectively means that 93% of the industry folios have come in equity schemes.

Liquid fund and other ETFs grew at a robust pace at 5% last month. The growing interest in liquid funds can be attributed to low duration funds gaining favour in the current increasing interest rate scenario. 

Overall, majority of the fund categories reported a growth in their folios. Gold ETF, income and gilt funds were the only categories, which saw a decline in their folio count. Range bound gold prices are mainly responsible for the category falling out of favour while rising interest rates are to be blamed for the decline in gilt folios. 

Income funds, which are suffering under the twin assault of interest rate hike and credit related fears saw the highest decline in absolute terms in October.     

Industry folio data for month of October 2018

                                                                                        Source: SEBI