DSP BlackRock Equity Fund - Consistently Reliable

With the earning season kick-ing off, all eyes will now be riveted on India Inc’s performance in the last quarter of FY2011. Have company bottomlines improved or have rising input costs dented profitability in Q4? Earnings are one of the key fundamental factors in determining stock price and indi-rectly affect the direction of the equity market, though one needs to under-stand that the impact (good or bad) of this might be short-lived and that one should continue investing regularly in the market.One can easily participate in the equity market by regularly invest-ing in good mutual funds through SIPs. And DSP BR Equity is one such good fund that can be made a part of your core portfolio, looking at its consistent track-record over the years. While it is not the fund that will amaze you by its performance, it is one of those funds that you can rely on to reward you consistently over a longer run. This is evident from its performance over the years wherein it has consistently managed to stay ahead of its category though the returns have not been top-notch.Launched in 1997, the fund has provided astonishing returns of 24.66 per cent since inception. And in the last three- and five-year period, the fund has beaten the category returns by 441 and 549 bps respectively. Such attributes have made this fund one of the preferred choices as a core fund for the investors. This has resulted in a gradual rise in the fund’s AUM, which stood at a mammoth Rs 2250 crore at the end of March 2011.

A multi-cap fund by its mandate, the fund actively moves across large to mid and small-cap counters and vice-versa, depending upon market condi-tions. And one can say that this has really worked for the fund more often than not. Barring the rally post-March-June 2009, when the fund was caught off guard due to its defensive portfolio stance, it has done well in most of the market rallies as that in 2007 and has managed to stay well afloat during the bearish period of 2008. In March, the fund’s portfolio was vaguely tilted towards the large-cap stocks looking at market volatility. This fund generally sports a well diversified portfolio and even this time holds 68 stocks with the top 10 holdings contributing a mere 34 per cent of the net asset.

Apoorva Shah has managed this fund since 2006 and since then the fund has managed to be ahead of its category consistently. At DSP, Shah co-manages seven other funds, of which five have managed to beat the category over the longer horizon.

Thus looking at the fund’s asset allocation and performance, low-mod-erate risk investors can take exposure to this fund.