Equity MFs see Rs 8,000 crore outflows in March

Mutual funds pulled out Rs 8,000 crore from stock markets in March on profit-booking, even as they invested Rs 68,000 crore in the entire past fiscal. This marks the first outflow since May 2014, when MFs pulled out Rs 1,078 crore. Prior to that, they had been continuously infusing money into stock markets. Wealthforce.com founder Siddhant Jain said: “Coming month seems good as it is the start of a new financial year and a lot of retail investors start their SIPs with a new financial year. We expect good inflows into MFs leading them to putting money into the market.” MFs registered a big net inflow of Rs 68,281 crore in the financial year 2015-16, ended last month. In comparison, fund managers invested a net sum of Rs 40,722 crore in 2014-15 while they pulled out over Rs 14,000 crore in the preceding financial year. “The reason for the huge outflow (last month) by MFs in the stock market could be twofold. First, since it is the financial year end, a lot of banks and corporates would have pulled out their investments to balance their books and meet the cash flow requirements.” “Second, the market is up about 8-8.5 per cent since a month ago. So a lot of investors, mainly institutional, could be doing some profit-booking and exiting their mutual fund positions, leading to outflows,” he added.