Performance Evaluation of Selected Open Ended Equity Funds for the Post Recession Period: An Indian Perspective

The Global recession has marred the countries worldwide. The ever-growing Indian economy is no exception and has finally encountered a slowdown and the results are crystal clear. The lower GDP, increased inflation rate, increased job searches are some of the highlighting factors signaling the impact of global recession. The present study attempts to unveil the performance of selected mutual funds during post global recession i.e. period from March 2009 - March 2012. Traditional performance measures like Sharpe ratio, Treynor ratio and Jensen's alpha are widely used performance measures based on mean variance framework and are used to evaluate the selected mutual fund schemes. The study discovered that on comparison of rate of return of sample schemes with the benchmark return, majority of the equity mutual funds have outperformed the benchmark. However, when the mean return of the entire sample is considered, it does not show significantly different return from that of the benchmark Sensex. However, an analysis based on risk-adjusted performance, showed a different picture where most of the funds in the sample have posted positive and better Sharpe, Treynor's ratio as well as Jensons alpha, compared to the benchmark Sensex. In short, it can be said that although the study provides some evidence of satisfactory performance in terms of returns generated per unit of risk, yet a conclusive statement regarding the capabilities of mutual funds as an investment avenue is still obscure.