When you invest in mutual funds, you are reminded time and again that “mutual fund returns are subject to market risks”. Naturally, you may feel that if your scheme is subject to market risks, it should be delivering market linked returns, since risk and return are two sides of the same coin. But how can you gauge whether a scheme is in fact delivering returns that are in line with the market or not? Here’s where benchmarking comes in.
What is benchmarking? The performance of a mutual fund scheme can be gauged in comparison to a benchmark index or indices. For such purposes, a benchmark index is one which contains broadly similar instruments to those that a scheme sets out to invest in. Read the rest of this entry »