Equity MFs witness higher inflow in January

Mumbai: Inflows into equity mutual funds rose sharply in January 2023 to ₹12,546.51 crore  as compared to ₹7,303.39 crore in the previous month, which analysts said shows signs of growing maturity among retail investors, who stayed invested in spite of markets turning red in January.

The mutual fund industry's total assets under management (AUM) as on January 31, 2023 stood at over ₹39.31 lakh crore a tad lower than in Decem-ber 2022 of over ₹39.88 crore in December 2022 due to equity market's underperformance in January and outflows from debt funds.

Hybrid schemes also saw the higher inflows of ₹4,491.97 crore compared to ₹2,255.26 crore in Dece-mber. Flows were strong in two hybrid schemes namely Multi Asset Allo-cation Fund (₹2,181.69 crore) and Arbitrage Fund (₹2,054.59 crore).

Among the equity oriented schemes, flows were higher in small cap fund (₹2,255.85 crore), multi cap fund (₹1,773.02 crore), mid cap fund (₹1,628.06 crore) large and mid cap fund (₹1,901.99 crore) and equity linked saving scheme (₹1,414 crore) while all sc-hemes saw positive flows..

“Despite fears about a recession in the United States economy, the Indian markets continued to witness inflows, likely based on expectations of growth in the Indian markets. As investors make conscious investing decisions, their overall preference towards investing in dips is evident from the magnitude of flows into small and mid-cap stocks, considering that the Nifty Smallcap 100 was amongst the worst performers in December 2022. On an overall basis too, the markets ended the month of January in red, with most sectors witnessing negative returns," said Kavitha Krishnan, senior analyst, Morningstar India.
The debt funds saw outflows of ₹10,316.15 crore for the second straight month.