In a chat with ET NOW, Kaustubh Belapurkar speaks of the popular stocks of funds and the ones being offloaded.
Top large-cap stocks bought:
Buying took place in ITC, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, and housing finance companies like HDFC.
There was some correction in the ITC stock price in November, post demonetisation. As a result, a lot of funds began to pick it up. That has been one of the triggers for funds to see increased activity in HDFC too. The stock price corrected for HDFC Bank and ICICI Bank.
Where large caps are concerned, buying on dips has been the norm.
Top large-cap stocks sold:
Reliance Industries.
Bank of Baroda.
Post the Cyrus Mistry saga, funds have actually been buying quite heavily into Tata stocks including Tata Motors. But December witnessed some of the funds exit Tata Motors.
AB Nuvo saw a fair chunk sold by one of the large asset managers.
HPCL has done increasingly well for the fund companies. They have been large investors in this and have made a lot of money on it. So in some sense it would be a profit booking move for them to move out of this counter.
Top mid- and small-cap stocks bought:
The Sheela Foam IPO got subscribed by quite a few asset managers. In that sense, it is amongst the top picks for the mid-cap names.
A lot of small- and mid-cap funds, including the MNC funds, bought into Clariant Chemicals and increased their holdings quite substantially.
SKS Microfinance had a very sharp drop of post demonetization, but given the guidance from the management, funds have actually been buying into the financial inclusion stock quite heavily.
Then there were a couple of private and smaller banks like Ratnakar Bank and the Federal Bank. Federal Bank has been a fairly popular stock where it is amongst the largest holdings on an aggregate basis for small- and mid-cap funds.
Your take on the top 3 large-cap and top 3 mid-cap stocks owned by mutual funds:
It is an aggregate number for the industry because there will always be funds that invest into both large- and mid-cap stocks.
In the large-cap space, the two large private banks - HDFC and ICICI Bank, followed by Infosys. We saw the uptick in technology stock buying actually fall for December, be it TCS or Infosys. So it is the third largest holding of mutual funds on an aggregate basis.
In the mid-cap space, Federal Bank is one of the popular smaller private sector banks that has been actually been a darling for a lot of fund managers for a while.
Max Financial Services is another name. Ramco Cements has made a lot of money for small- and mid-cap fund managers and is a popular holding.
