​MD's DESK

Dear Friends,

Indian equity indices were in the negative terrain in August with S&P BSE Sensex and Nifty 50 falling 2.41% and 1.58%, respectively. Performance down the capitalization was better with BSE Midcap and BSE Small cap outperforming the large cap BSE Sensex by 3.4% and 1.8% respectively. FIIs sold equities worth Rs. 14,156 crores in August 2017 compared to buying of Rs. 2,488 crores in July 2017; it is the highest since November 2016. Domestic mutual funds continued investing and invested over Rs. 16,500 crores in August, the highest ever equity investments in a single month primarily driven by excess systemic liquidity.

Excess liquidity has also led to the shift in the investment pattern as seen from the recent data from RBI which shows households are moving away from physical assets to financial assets. The primary reason for the shift is demonetisation, which led to diversion of money to financial assets. However, financial assets such as mutual funds still comprise a small percentage of the overall investments in the economy. We expect continued and increased participation from retail investors, especially Tier II and Tier III cities going forward.

Keeping this in mind, we at SBI Mutual Fund, plan to continue to educate investors, existing and new, on mutual funds both offline and online as investor awareness is one major goal for all of us in the industry in order to increase the industry reach. Additionally, what we as asset managers can do is to make better use of technology to make the investment process from KYC submission to final transaction and follow-up processes paperless and convenient. Continuing with our effort to increase our engagement with our valued customers, we have launched our financial blog – ‘Inspire’ recently. With the new platform, we will share our thoughts and ideas with respect to markets and financial planning, enabling investor awareness with tools that simplify and develop stronger connections with our customers.

As always, we value your investments and look forward to your continued patronage.

Warm Regards,

Anuradha Rao
Managing Director & CEO