'In life, as in markets, nothing is as good or bad as it appears'

With the Covid crisis affecting the performance of equity funds across the board, it has been interesting to look at how certain funds have done better than others at containing downside. We caught up with Neil Parag Parikh, Chairman and CEO, PPFAS Mutual Fund to understand more about the strategy employed in picking stocks and managing risk. Your Long Term Equity Fund has contained downside well in the last one year. What would you attribute this to? How much is your international exposure responsible for this performance? The US markets have outperformed the Indian markets in the recent past and having around 30 per cent of our portfolio outside India has surely contributed to the performance of the fund. Having global diversification balances the portfolio and reduces overall volatility, thereby limiting the downside, as all markets do