List of all International Mutual Funds that still accept fresh investments - Still the best way to invest in US and other hot global markets!
While the Indian Markets have performed less than optimally over the past couple of years, I have sold my investments at all time highs even during the US-Iran war. How? Through funds that invest in stocks from countries like China, US, Taiwan etc.
The underperformance of Indian markets was almost symmetrical with the outperformance of these other international markets as the primary reasons - depreciation of INR and FIIs diverting funds from India to other countries - both worked in the favor of India (INR) based International Mutual Funds.
But after the MF Industry exhausted the overseas investment limit of $7 billion set by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in February 2022, investments in these International Mutual Funds have become much more troublesome where Asset Management Companies (AMCs) have to restrict fresh inflows into these funds. Now funds either don't accept any fresh investment or only accept fresh investments through SIP/Lumpsum. The more popular funds aren't even accepting fresh SIP investments on already registered SIPs.
In all this, Edelweiss has recently come to my attention where they seem to be the only AMC still accepting fresh SIP investments across all their International Mutual Funds upto 5k per month per SIP registration. Not just that, they seem to have an amazing range of International Funds exposing your portfolio to US, Europe, China, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia etc.
Using some of the less obvious funds as example, the Edelweiss Emerging Markets Opportunities fund, invests in an ETF which in turn has the following top stocks in it's portfolio -
| Name | Sector | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| TSMC | Information Technology | 9.9% |
| Samsung Electronics | Information Technology | 6.5% |
| Tencent | Communication Services | 5.3% |
| SK Hynix | Information Technology | 3.7% |
| Petroleo Brasileiro | Energy | 2.8% |
| Delta Electronics | Information Technology | 2.5% |
| Credicorp | Financials | 2.1% |
| Grupo Financiero Banorte | Financials | 2.0% |
| Alibaba | Consumer Discretionary | 1.9% |
| Hana Financial | Financials | 1.8% |
Just to clarify, this is not an ad for Edelweiss in any way or any of the funds mentioned here. This is also not financial advise but rather education about the diversification that your MF distributor is not talking about (evident from the low AUMs in these funds). I have attached the performance of these funds over the last three years and here's what you should note from the graphs -
- The graphs show performance of the fund (solid blue) vs Nifty 50 (dotted blue line) over the last three years. The % returns mentioned in the top right corner of the graph is the absolute return of the fund for last three years - a positive number for all the funds - when Nifty 50 has given an absolute return of -0.36% in the same period.
- Note that in many graphs, line denoting Nifty 50 has been on top of the line denoting the fund for the most part. If you were investing via SIP in these funds, the longer it was underperforming than Nifty 50, the more your returns would be in those funds today, compared to SIP investments in Nifty 50.
This earlier underperformance of International funds is probably why many people didn't invest in such funds and might be in a tough situation today if they need to redeem their non-international investments. The current underperformance of Nifty is also the reason why you shouldn't ditch your Nifty/Domestic Investment SIPs.
Edelweiss is of course not the only AMC with International Mutual Funds, but it seems to be the only AMC which is allowing fresh investments into it's funds. But other AMCs like Nippon also open their funds for fresh investments from time to time as you can check in my other post here - https://www.reddit.com/r/pFinTools/comments/1rzncq3/nippon_taiwan_mutual_fund_is_accepting_fresh/
More International Funds accepting fresh Investments:
- Axis Global Innovation FoF
- Axis Global Equity Alpha FoF
- Axis Greater China Equity FoF
- Baroda BNP Paribas Auqa Fund
- Franklin Asian Equity Fund
- Franklin US Opportunities Equity Active FoF
- Invesco Global Consumer Trends
- Invesco Global Equity Income Fund
- Invesco Pan European Equity Fund
If you'd like to stay updated whenever more international mutual funds open for fresh investments, make sure you have joined r/pFinTools
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Pro Tip - ETFs are another convenient way of investing in International Markets through your Indian Broker. Since these ETFs typically invest in foreign indices rather than being actively managed, this should be the choice typically over an actively managed mutual fund covering the same market.
But since February 2022, the 6 international ETFs available in India are also facing massive liquidity crunch. As a result sometimes, these ETFs trade at premiums of up to 30-40% over their intrinsic value (determined by iNAV). But sometimes, we also find these ETFs trading at very low premium/slight discount as you can see in my other post here - https://www.reddit.com/r/pFinTools/comments/1qqzapj/mon100_actually_trading_at_a_discount_compared_to/
If you are able to get these at discount/lower premiums, you can then later sell it at higher premiums + growth of underlying assets. And you can track this iNAV directly on the pFinTools ETF iNAV Monitor here - pFinTools.com/etf-iNAV (this is different than any other tool/source available online because it tells you exactly when the iNAV was last updated by the AMC, so that you can make educated investment decisions. Other platforms just present the iNAV data as-is from the exchange/AMC and many times that data can be unfortunately weeks old)