Low-Cost Large Fund Core
The opposite of chasing performance. Selects the cheapest schemes by total expense ratio among funds with meaningful assets under management, holds 12 of them equally weighted, and rebalances only twice a year.
Why this is expected to work
Expense ratio is the only scheme attribute that is known in advance and is deterministic. Past return is a noisy estimate of a quantity that may not persist; cost is a certainty, charged daily, compounding against you regardless of what the market does. Sharpe's (1991) arithmetic of active management is the underlying argument: before costs, the average actively managed rupee must earn the market return, because in aggregate active investors hold the market; after costs it must earn less, by exactly the costs. Morningstar's long-running fund research has repeatedly found expense ratio to be the single most reliable predictor of future relative performance available. An AUM floor is applied because a very small scheme carries closure and merger risk that has nothing to do with its portfolio. Note that the direct-plan version of any scheme is the same portfolio with the distributor commission removed — that difference alone typically exceeds the dispersion this screen is ranking on.
How the pipeline works
Scheme has a published expense ratio
Keeps rows where ter > 0
ter > 0 AUM above Rs 500 cr
Keeps rows where aum > 5000000000
aum > 5000000000 12 cheapest by expense ratio
Selects the bottom 12 by ter
What this template teaches
- ter and aum — mutual_fund-scope fields
- Screening on cost rather than return
- Low-turnover semi-annual rebalancing
Expense Ratio Is the Only Fund Number You Know in Advance
Past return is a noisy estimate of something that may not persist. Cost is a certainty, charged daily, compounding against you. That asymmetry is why it is the most reliable predictor available.
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