Reliance MF Takes Top Honors

Two of the shooting stars, HDFC Taxsaver and HDFC Top 200, saw a revision in their rating from five-star to four-star at the end of January 2007. The former has dropped its five-star tag after a long time. The other tax-planning fund from the same fund house- HDFC Long Term Advantage- has taken its place. In the last five years, this is only the second time when HDFC Taxsaver has dropped out of the five-star club, earlier being in November 2004.

In the diversified equity category, Birla Mid Cap replaced HDFC Top 200 to join the elite club again after a gap of seven months. In fact all the diversified equity funds that saw a downgrade in their ratings are large cap focused. With the BSE Small Cap index performing better than the Sensex and BSE Mid Cap over the month of January 2007, the largest strides were made by the mid and small cap oriented funds. UTI India Advantage Equity made its debut at the club of Value Research rated funds with a two-star rating.

Apart from HDFC Mutual Fund some other fund houses that saw a down grade among their five-star rated funds are Tata Mutual fund, Birla Sun Life, and DBS Cholamandalam Mutual Fund. The downgrades at these three fund houses were restricted to debt oriented funds.

Reliance Mutual Fund and UTI Mutual Fund managed to increase the number of five-star rated funds by one each, these were again debt oriented funds.

The funds that regressed the most were DWS MIP Plan A and Prudential ICICI Gilt Treasury PF. DWS MIP Plan A faced a set back on account of both- a poor return score as well as a higher risk score.

A total of 411 funds were rated across categories, of which 38 funds saw an improvement in their ratings, while 36 funds faced a downgrade. HDFC Mutual Fund forsook its position of having the most number of five-star rated funds to Reliance Mutual Fund.

Fund Family: How They Stack Up AMC Name    1    2    3    4    5 ABN AMRO   1   2   -   1   1 Benchmark   1   1   1   -   - Birla Sunlife   1   6   14   11   3 BoB   1   1   4   2   - Canbank   5   2   3   2   3 DBS Chola   1   2   5   1   - Deutsche   3   2   1   2   - DSP ML   -   2   2   7   1 Escorts   -   3   1   2   - Franklin Templeton   1   11   14   4   2 HDFC   3   9   4   8   5 HSBC   -   2   7   2   - ING Vysya   2   4   3   2   1 J M   -   2   5   6   - Kotak Mahindra   -   4   7   3   3 LIC   5   5   4   2   2 Principal   -   7   6   5   1 Prudential ICICI   2   3   17   3   3 Reliance   2   1   4   3   6 Sahara   -   -   3   2   - SBI   4   5   6   2   4 Standard Chartered   3   4   1   2   2 Sundaram BNP Paribas   -   2   6   4   1 Tata   3   3   10   7   1 Taurus   4   -   2   -   - UTI Mutual Fund   -   9   13   8   4 Data as on January 31, 2007