For reasons known to all a few of the sponsors pulled out of the The Morningstar Conference, Mumbai 2018. It was still a good hit, and had some top names in the investment world. Most of you can Google and find out the names – I will not waste your time.

It was a good idea to invite Mr. Mark Mobius in person and Mr. John Bogle through the video!

Let me tell you what I enjoyed. I liked the simple things that MM said in his speech. First of all a little of this great man’s background. He spent a big part of his life with Franklin Templeton and in India he ran a fund called “Templeton India Growth Fund” – now it is run under a new name “Templeton India Value fund”. I have no hesitation at all in saying that it was the MOST TRUE TO LABEL fund in India. No doubt about that. He is a Value fund man, and almost always bullish on India.

MM is a Emerging Market champion and it was with glee he said that Developed markets would grow at HALF the rate of the EM.

He used the word ‘Frontier Markets’…and was now keen to invest in India, but he was sure that it is not exactly cheap. He now runs his own fund and has a lot of money ear marked for the Frontier Markets/ developing markets…or what have you.

He was clear that his portfolio would concentrate on ESG. For a company to get into his portfolio has to be conscious / aware of the impact on Environment, Society and has good Corporate Governance.

On the current state of the market he was sure that the US $ will get to be more powerful.

He did not feel this was bad.He was sure that a weak rupee is pure bad news. He expects Indian exports to benefit because of this..and even boost chemical and other exports thanks to the US- China trade war.

He said Active managers will find it difficult to generate alpha and he was seeing ESG – as an edge to create alpha. He said alpha can be created only by being against the herd. Indexing according to him is herding.

In the Indian context….which of our fund managers will create alpha? On a TRI basis, I am skeptical of aplha creating managers. I mean managers managing more than Rs. 10,000 crores in a Large cap fund.

Let’s see.