CR’s Flexicap Fund has moved up to top quartile on 1 yr basis in its category, just like many other key equity funds of the AMC, which are now in top quartile on 1 yr basis.
Shridatta reiterates that sticking to one’s investment philosophy and process are key to long term performance. Equally, delivering through-cycle performance without taking undue risks is what delivers the most investor satisfaction over time – and that is what he and his team remain focused on doing.
CR’s Flexicap Fund has always been conservative in allocations, with around 70% in large caps and 30% in SMIDs, with perhaps 5% leeway on either side at any point in time.
Consumer discretionary is the largest overweight in this portfolio and includes autos, platform companies, aviation and other strong growth segments.
Financials exposure includes large banks that are resilient through cycles, high growth high RoE consumer lending NBFCs and capital market plays including exchanges and AMCs.
Shridatta believes we will see a cyclical earnings recovery in the second half of FY26 and is positioning his portfolio to benefit from this.
He continues to remain cautious on IT services – their revenue models are getting disrupted in multiple ways and one has to see how they respond strategically.
Within FMCG, he sees pockets of growth in packaged foods and beverages but remains cautious on traditional personal care producers where brand preferences are getting tested with the advent of disruptive distribution models.
The world is transitioning into a new era – one where faith in the global reserve currency – USD – is diminishing and gold is in demand as a consequence and one where the US Government’s policy instability is akin to some emerging markets and their long bond yields are therefore rising relentlessly to offer an appropriate premium.
The US Government may likely be allowing its currency to depreciate and also put up high tariff barriers – both of which will disincentivize imports and force domestic production at least to some extent –which can create a longer term growth wave in the US, albeit at the cost of significant near term pain.
US currency depreciation is good news for precious metals, for hard assets as well as for flows into emerging markets.