Analyzing The Past Performance Of Three Global Equity Mutual Funds Of State Street Global Advisors

“However, there are over 10,000 mutual funds in operation, and these funds vary greatly according to investment objective, size strategy, and style. Mutual funds are available for virtually every investment strategy (e.g. value, growth), every sector (e.g. biotech, internet), and every country and region of the world. So even the process of selecting a fund can be tedious” (Staff).

Historically, people invest their money in mutual funds as a means to generate extra income. This can be separated into either stocks or bonds, with each having their specialty in a portfolio. The following report provides an analysis of two funds, the Fidelity® Nasdaq® Composite Index Fund (FNCMX) and the Fidelity® Floating Rate High Income Fund (FFRHX). The analysis of the yearly returns of each fund from 2005-2014 will include the risk and return for investing in each with key statistics such as mean, median, standard deviation, and range for indicators of their performance. These statistics will be paired with visuals so the client can have a visual representation of what they look like. The analysis will also compare the performance

Mutual fund also offers good investment opportunities to the investors. Like all investment, they also carry certain risks. The investors should compare the risks and expected yields after adjustment of tax on various instruments while taking investment decisions. The Indian mutual fund industry has witnessed several structural and regulatory reforms.

There are various investment opportunities available today in financial market for an investor to avail and earn returns. An investor has different options available today ranging from bank deposits, debentures, fixed income, etc. where there is low risk as well as low return; to equity market having a higher return to higher relative risk. Mutual Fund is an investment scheme which pools money from investors to invest in a diversified portfolio of stocks. Every investor wants to invest in that investment where risk minimized and the return of investment maximized. Mutual funds investment is becoming significant all over the world and its popularity and demand is rising steadily (Nazir & Nawaz, 2010).Mutual funds in Pakistan are created and managed by Asset Management Companies and regulated by Securities and Exchage Comission of Pakistan. The investor purchase share with in the fund however the quantity of shares in issue varies consistent with demand,thus the term open ended.This implies that the value of share reflects the underlying net asset value

Every investment company appoints a fund manager who invests the money in different investment opportunities. These could run from shares to debentures to currency market instruments, contingent on the plan's expressed targets. The income earned through these investments and the capital appreciation acknowledged by the plan is shared by its unit holders in extent to the quantity of units claimed by them. Therefore a Mutual Fund is the most appropriate investment for the investor as it offers a chance to put resources into an enhanced, professionally managed basket of securities at a moderately low cost. Mutual fund schemes are offered on the basis of structure and investment objectives.

But for choosing such an option, the common investor needs to be fully informed about the stock market which becomes a difficult situation. The intricacies of the market are difficult to understand. Mutual Funds have both pros and cons when compared to direct investments in particular and individual securities. An important characteristic of mutual funds is that, the contributors and the beneficiaries are the same people i.e. the investors. Many a times it may so happen that, the investor lands up buying shares of those companies, which they would have otherwise could not buy due to the high prices. But in case of mutual funds, due to the huge corpus collected, an individual can get shares in highly rated companies. To measure the performance of a mutual fund, the investors must look at the Net Asset Value (NAV) of the fund. The net asset value is assessed by calculating the total assets minus all the expenses and divided by the number of units held in the fund. Studies show that the NAV of a fund is affected by various factors of the fund like the turnover, expenses ratio, load status, etc. A load is a sales charge or commission. This is an amount paid by the investor for the intermediary which could be a broker, financial planner, an investment advisor, etc. This is the fee paid to them for their time and expertise. And this load can either be paid at the time of purchase of the

For individual investors who don’t have time to study and research investments, mutual funds are the best option for reaping the benefits of diversified investments with minimum effort. In most funds, it is possible to start investing with as little as a few hundred rupees. Also, unlike many other investments, mutual fund investments are generally liquid in nature and can be redeemed without any delay.

The idea of investing in the stock market is at times challenging. Heightened activities witness the stock market itself. These activities gained the investor’s interest increasingly. The stock market patterns have changed due to the current globalization and integration of the subsequent markets. Just to name some of the global markets are New York Stock Market, Hong Kong Stock exchange among others. Sometimes these market patterns have changed due to politico-economic backgrounds (Hamid Faruqee, 2008, p. 154).

The investment procedure on a mutual fund is a simple and quick matter and this explains why it is so popular and

Becoming major suppliers of funds in the financial market, mutual funds have become a very popular investment in recent years. Because of the diversity of investments, portfolio management’s expertise, and liquidity, mutual funds have grown rapidly over the past few years. One of the most popular group’s investing in mutual funds is people with self-driven retirement plans. This provides professionally handled money and pooled risk. There are more than 8,000 different mutual funds, with more than 88 million households owning shares of one or more.

A mutual fund is a collection of diversified investments combined into one fund chosen by the investment company. The mutual fund is classified by what type of funds are included within the fund. When an investor choses to invest in a mutual fund, he or she is adding their money to a pool of other investors money. This money is used to invest in a number of different securities based on specific investment goals. Investment companies choose to include many different stocks, as well as bonds or money market instruments in order to reduce risk and completely diversify the fund (Tyson, 2007). The investor owns shares of the funds rather than owning the underlying investments (Morris & Morris, 2005).

Two funds were chosen in order to determine the performance of each investment by observing the risk and significance of fund management fees. In order to achieve the highest level of accuracy possible, the two funds were chosen in the same sector of the market and of equal size and investment strategy. One fund chosen was an open-ended actively managed mutual fund, and the other a close-ended passively managed exchange traded fund.

The fund philosophy centers on investing mainly into top 200 companies by market capitalization. However, the fund manager would also take exposure to a maximum of 20% of net asset value into companies beyond these top 200 companies by market capitalization. The fund manager intends to use both top-down and bottom-up approach of stock selection as well as sector identification for potential investment. The fund mandates to invest 95% of its assets (excluding investments in debt securities, money market securities and cash and cash equivalents) across the top 25 holdings in the Portfolio. The fund also intends to invest in debt securities and has the flexibility to take exposure into ADR/GDR and Foreign Securities.

In India, gold ETFs were started mainly with a goal to build the liquidity for the better market productivity. This paper is an exact investigation of the execution of Gold Exchange Traded Funds with CNX BSE 500 since January 2012 till April 2016 as far as active returns and Jensen 's alpha. For this concentrate only bank 's Gold ETFs has taken into the thought i.e. SBI Gold ETFs, Axis Bank Gold ETFs and HDFC Bank Gold ETFs. The active returns (returns of the trade exchanged assets subtracted with the profits of fundamental list) examination demonstrates that Gold ETFs beat in greatest years when contrasted with their underlying index i.e CNX BSE 500. The concentrate likewise uncovers that Jensen 's alpha is negative in few of the years, which implies that Gold ETFs have not possessed the capacity to give overabundance returns over CNX BSE 500. In general, the study uncovers that Gold ETFs have performed better in term of active returns.

1. To study performance of equity funds in Thailand whether equity funds outperform the benchmark. 2. To study whether performance of equity funds in Thailand is due to genuine stock- picking skill or in part of luck.