Indian funds lose out to Asian peers
As Australia considers a trade agreement with India, how have Indian funds performed in recent times?
Prime Minister Scott Morrison was due to hold a summit with India’s leader Narendra Modi to discuss plans for Australia to export more goods to India, including agricultural ones. Morrison described how he was looking to “cement India in the top tier of Australia’s partnerships”.
This followed a disagreement with China which has imposed tariffs on Australian barley imports.
According to FE Analytics data, within the Australian Core Strategies universe, there were seven funds which invested solely in India.
These were Ellerston India, ETFS Reliance India NIFTY 50 ETF, Fidelity India, Fiducian India, India Avenue Equity Retail, India Avenue Equity Wholesale and Jaipur AM Master.
However, all funds had reported losses since the start of the year.
The best-performing funds since the start of the year to 30 April were Fidelity India and Ellerston India which had both lost more than 13% over the period.
This was double the losses by both the Asia Pacific ex Japan and Asia Pacific single country sectors over the same period of 6%.
Only six of the funds had a one-year track record available as the ETFS fund was not launched until June 2019 but all three failed to report positive gains over the year to 30 April. Over the 12-month period, the best-performing fund was Ellerston India which lost 10.9% followed by losses of 12.7% for Fidelity India and 13.5% for Jaipur AM Master.
Since the ETFS fund was launched in June 2019, the only Indian ETF in the sector, it had lost 27%.
Looking at the six funds over three years, the difference was more pronounced with Ellerston and Fidelity and Jaipur all reporting positive returns of around 8% while the Fiducian fund lost 18% and the India Avenue Retail and Wholesale funds lost 12.4% and 11% respectively over the three-year period.
There was also a significant difference between sector returns over three years with the Asia Pacific sector returning 23.7% but the Asia Pacific single country sector returning only 11%.
AUTHOR
Laura Dew
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