Impacts of Economic Events on Performance of Mutual Funds : Evidence from India

Recent years have witnessed phenomenal growth in both the number and size of diversified equity mutual funds in India. But performance of mutual fund in India has been volatile because of several macro-economic factors. In the top-down approach to evaluate the investment in stock markets, economic risk tops the list and its importance cannot be understated. Principally performance of equity diversified mutual fund depends upon the stock market performance. The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of economic events on the risk-adjusted returns/performance of mutual funds in India using event study methodology. For the calculation of impact, Researcher has selected two mutual fund schemes (ICICI Prudential Balanced fund - Direct Plan - Growth & ICICI Prudential Dynamic-Direct Plan- Growth). This methodology addresses the problems of multiple event days and calendar clustering. The economic event considered for the research are recent global or cross border event (BREXIT- Britain Exit from the European Union) and Domestic event (GST- Goods and Services Tax). For the event study the event window of 11 days (i.e. 5 business days before and 5 business days after the event day including event day) will consider for abnormal return and estimation window of 11 days consider for normal return. The time gap for Normal and Abnormal return is 180 days. The event date of BREXIT has taken 24th June 2016 (National declaration of the European Union referendum result) and for GST has taken 03rd August 2016 (GST Amendment Bill passed in Rajya Sabha). In the proposed research Endeavour, researcher's shall made an attempt to identify that holder of equity mutual funds may earn abnormal return in response to above mentioned events and in the given period of time