The fund tool that we’re taking a look at in this issue is the Value Research WOW tool. WOW is an acronym for Who Owns What.

As the name suggests, WOW tells you which stock is owned by which mutual funds, and in what quantity. It is an easy-to-use tool, designed to do its job in a simple manner. You can access WOW on the homepage of www.ValueResearch Online.com without having to log in or register. Just enter the name of the company you’re interested in looking up and hit the ‘Get data’ button that will take you to the list of all the mutual funds that have bought shares of the said company. This tabular list gives you the fund names, percentage of net assets invested in the stock, the amount (in crores) invested in the stock and the date when the fund last declared its portfolio.

You can view investments in the company by funds that fall under the Equity, Long-term debt as well as Short-term debt categories by selecting the option from the drop-down menu at the top of the table. You can further sort the table in ascending and descending order by clicking on the column heads.

Getting data from Who Owns What is as easy as that. The tool can be of great use to savvy investors who wish to find out what fund managers think about the investment worthiness of a particular company. Any company that has a heavy presence in mutual fund portfolios can be said to have good long-term prospects. On the other hand, if fund managers don’t think too highly about a company, then investing in it directly might not be a great idea. Such information can be extremely useful in making investment decisions. But an investor can’t go about looking at every mutual fund’s portfolio to figure out how much it has invested in one company. That would be a seemingly impossible task, made easy by the WOW tool.

WOW would also be useful for investors who are bullish about a particular company, but don’t want to invest in it directly. Investing in a mutual fund that has a decent part of its assets invested in that stock would not only get you exposure to that company, but would help you diversify. WOW is a useful tool to help you find out such funds.

Who Owns What turns the tedious process of finding out how much different funds have invested in a particular stock into a simple 3-click solution. And, it’s free.