Investors are reoriented to shareholders – Kommersant

Private investors continue to actively enter the collective investment market. According to the Central Bank, in the first quarter the number of retail investors’ accounts in mutual funds grew by almost 400,000, to 8.4 million. Shareholders have recently been favoring intermediate payout funds and money market funds. However, with such investments, it is worth considering not only their apparent similarity with deposits, but also differences.

Growth accounts

In the first quarter, the inflow of funds to mutual funds slowed down sharply, the Central Bank points out in the “Overview of Key Indicators of Mutual and Joint-Stock Investment Funds” (.pdf). According to the results of the past quarter, investors invested 182 billion rubles in them, which is comparable to the result of the same period in 2022, but more than four times less than the inflow in the fourth quarter of last year. The inflow of funds went primarily to closed mutual funds – according to the Central Bank, it amounted to 179 billion rubles. against 185 billion rubles. a year earlier and 764 billion rubles. a quarter earlier.

A small inflow is observed in open-ended funds (OPIF, about 1.4 billion rubles, against 9.6 billion rubles withdrawn a year earlier and 8.4 billion rubles a quarter earlier) and exchange-traded funds (BPIF, almost 2.5 billion rubles. , while in the first quarter of 2022 they lost 4.3 billion rubles, but in the fourth quarter they attracted 4.4 billion rubles).

At the same time, the Bank of Russia notes a sharp increase in the number of shareholders of all categories of funds. During the reporting period, the total number of individual accounts increased by 8.6% to 8.6 million.

The main growth came from open-end mutual funds and BPIFs, the total number of accounts of which increased by 4.7% to 8.41 million. According to the Central Bank, the popularity of retail mutual funds could be facilitated by lower deposit rates in early 2023.

As a result, citizens could channel part of their funds into potentially more profitable, albeit more risky, instruments.

However, investors are very selective in choosing directions for investment. The report of the regulator notes that during the reporting period, the most popular among private investors are mutual funds with regular income payments and highly liquid money market BPIFs. According to Kommersant’s estimate, based on Investfunds data, in January-April, the net inflow of shareholders’ funds to payout funds amounted to almost 23 billion rubles, and to money market funds – more than 9 billion rubles.

Deposit alternative

Funds with income payments appeared on the collective investment market only last year, after management companies had the opportunity to add a clause on the possibility of payments on shares to the rules of open mutual funds. Previously, this option was available only in closed-end and interval funds. The income on such funds is paid quarterly and is formed from receipts in the form of dividends on shares or coupon income on securities. “The amount of payments is not fixed and will differ in different periods. Since there are dividend seasons on the Russian market (second and fourth quarters), payments during these periods will be higher for shareholders of an equity fund or a mixed fund,” says Andrey Makarov, head of the sales department of Pervaya Management Company.

Coupon payments on bonds, both ruble and foreign currency, at quality issuers occur, as a rule, once every six months.

More risky issuers pay debt securities more often – once every four months, and sometimes monthly. But such bonds are quite rare in the stock market. In addition, some bond issues involve partial early redemption (amortization) or redemption (offer), but such transactions are less regular.

To date, investors have access to eight funds of this type from five management companies. The minimum entry threshold for most funds is 50 thousand rubles, but there are funds whose shares can be bought for several thousand rubles and even for 100 rubles. The main part of the funds available to investors is focused on dividend stocks, but there are bond and mixed funds.

In the case of equity and mixed funds, the remuneration of management companies is 1.5–3.2% of the net asset value (NAV) per year, in the case of bond funds – 1.5%.

Additional commissions may be charged for transactions for the purchase and sale of shares at a bank branch or an office of the Criminal Code.

When buying such funds, one should also take into account the drawdown in the value of the share after the payment of dividends by the amount of the payment. Andrey Makarov draws attention to the fact that upon receipt of a dividend payment, the management company will withhold personal income tax in the amount of 13% or 15% for incomes over 5 million rubles. In the case of a classic mutual fund, personal income tax will be charged upon redemption of the share, but on condition that they have owned it for less than three years. “If an investor wants to reinvest in a fund, then it is better to choose classic open or exchange-traded mutual funds that invest in similar assets. Since when paying intermediate income, personal income tax is levied, which reduces the amount of reinvested funds, ”notes Andrey Makarov.

Money pillow in the package

The high popularity of money market funds is associated with their protective properties. Such funds earn mainly on reverse repurchase transactions, and therefore are not exposed to market risk. Even in February 2022, when the shares of most of the funds focused on ruble assets collapsed in price, the shares of money market funds brought a return of 0.6%. According to Alfa Capital analyst Alexander Dzhioev, money market funds are as close as possible to deposits in terms of their characteristics, but they have a number of advantages – daily accrual of income and, importantly, keeping it for the client when he leaves the fund at any time.

According to Investfunds, investors have access to seven funds of this type from four management companies. Most of the funds have a minimum entry threshold of 1 thousand rubles, but there are also those where the bar is set at around 1 million rubles. The remuneration of the management companies of such funds is one of the lowest on the market and generally amounts to 0.12–0.3% of the NAV.

However, with such investments, it should be borne in mind that in stable times, their results are noticeably inferior not only to stock funds, but also to bond funds. Therefore, usually money market funds are considered for short-term placement of funds.

According to Alexander Dzhioev, with further improvement in market conditions, these funds can “quickly find their way to more risky assets in the stock market.”

Vitaly Gaidaev