Mutual funds underperform their benchmarks most of the time. When the market is sluggish or down, their performance becomes worse. Not surprisingly, 39% of the funds outperformed their benchmarks in the September quarter. Amazingly, three HDFC funds were among the best five and three JM funds were among the worst five. Here is a report.

Leaders
At the commencement of the September quarter,...

The liquidity crunch and credit crisis that originated in the US have hit global financial markets like a whirlwind. The crisis is only getting worse. As the world tries to grapple with it, one more myth has been shattered. We were told by our policy-makers and corporate leaders that the Indian economy is insulated from the global turmoil. The market is no respecter of such theories. Indian...

One of the world’s best-performing hedge funds is Renaissance Technologies controlled by Jim Simons. And it is completely unlike an investment firm. Renaissance has about 60 top brains from Japan to Cuba who have done mathematics, physics, astrophysics, statistics, number theory, computer science and computational linguistics. Some of them are former professors of mathematics who have taught...