Sailing Smoothly - ICICI Prudential Dynamic Fund

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The Union Budget is now behind us. In general, the expectations from the budget are always high, though this time it was quite different. With a challenging macro environment and the political tension persisting, most of us expected that there was very little this budget would be able to do for the industry as well as individuals! One can therefore now say that Pranabda managed to pull out a fairly growth-oriented budget which was positively welcomed by the stock markets. Is this change in sentiment here to stay or is it only a wave of euphoria for the time-being?Whatever the case, our job is to give you a fund that has stood up with equal finesse through tough as well as good times and one which has managed to ignore short-term hiccups. One such fund is the ICICI Prudential Dynamic Fund. This fund may not have turned heads with its performance, but has displayed a good quality of defending its investors during the bearish period of 2008 wherein it limited its investors’ losses far better than the category. By mandate, the fund manager enjoys complete flexibility in moving across assets (including cash) as well as market-cap.
And the fund manager has displayed astute abilities in using this in favour of its investors. Despite such aggressive attributes, the fund holds a value-driveninvestment approach wherein it enters into a stock or sector which offers value and holds it till the valuations look stretched.Such a strategy augurs well for conservative long-term investors who are willing to park their money in this fund.As value unlocking generally takes a longer period, it is recommended that one should be invested in this fund for a long run and not expect a leader-like performance in the bullish period.The fund has been consistent in staying ahead of its category in terms of performance. This is evident from its performance since inception, wherein it has rewarded its investors with astonishing returns of 32.58 per cent. While over one and five-year periods this fund has outperformed its category by 671 and 585 bps respectively. Coming back to its portfolio composition, it again has a defensive tilt. Holding close to 18 per cent in cash and others, more than 77 per cent of its net assets are invested in large-cap stocks, wherein its top ten holdings account for 39 per cent of the net assets. There are a total of 54 stocks that the fund holds in its portfolio. The manbehind such a tactful asset allocation over the last four years is S Naren who, along with Rajat Chandak, is managing six funds at ICICI AMC. All of these funds have managed to be far ahead of their respective categories. Thus one can take an exposure to this fund through SIP.