The number of investors in Portfolio Management Schemes (PMS) has been increasing steadily. According to the the Securities and Exchange Board of India’s (Sebi) website, the number of discretionary PMS investors have gone up from 39,306 in January, 2015 to 65,745 in December, 2016 — an increase of 67 per cent in the number of PMS investors getting added.
But it continues to be an enigma for many investors. Some think that it is a proxy for mutual funds (MFs). As the bull cycle matures, they believe the select stock-picked portfolios would do well. Some believe due to concentration, PMS portfolios are better than MFs, given their need to diversify over 40-70 stocks to manage higher scale of fund size. And of course, many would like to ape PMS managers and selectively invest themselves more in few of the opportunities.
