Arpico Ataraxia Cash Management Trust Fund vs CAL Money Market Fund

Arpico Ataraxia Cash Management Trust Fund is run by ArpicoAtaraxia Asset Management Pvt Ltd and CAL Money Market Fund by Capital Alliance Investments Ltd, so this compares two houses as well as two funds. Both are money market funds licensed by the Securities and Exchange Commission of Sri Lanka, which means they are doing broadly the same job, and the differences below are differences in how each house has chosen to do it.

The clearest difference is the management fee. Arpico Ataraxia Cash Management Trust Fund charges 0.25% a year against CAL Money Market Fund's 0.75%, a gap of 0.50 percentage points. On LKR 100,000 held for a year that is about LKR 500 more retained by a holder of Arpico Ataraxia Cash Management Trust Fund, before any difference in what the two funds actually earn. The fee is deducted from the fund's assets before the unit price is struck, so it applies whatever the market does — which makes it the one number here that is knowable in advance.

Over the 180 days to the date shown, Arpico Ataraxia Cash Management Trust Fund returned +4.28% against CAL Money Market Fund's +3.68%, a gap of 0.60 percentage points. That is one window: a different 180 days would very likely order them differently, and neither figure predicts the next six months. Both are price returns on the bid side and exclude income a fund distributed rather than accrued into its price.

They have not moved by the same amount. CAL Money Market Fund has annualised volatility of 0.41% against Arpico Ataraxia Cash Management Trust Fund's 0.71%, meaning Arpico Ataraxia Cash Management Trust Fund's unit price has swung roughly 1.7 times as much day to day. Volatility describes how the price has behaved, not how likely a loss is, and a fund that has been steady can still fall.

CAL Money Market Fund opens at LKR 100 where Arpico Ataraxia Cash Management Trust Fund requires LKR 1,000, so for a smaller first investment only one of the two is available at all.

Among the 19 money market funds we price daily, Arpico Ataraxia Cash Management Trust Fund ranks 4th on 180-day return and CAL Money Market Fund 18th, against a category median of +4.18% over the same window. On fee they sit 2nd and 17th cheapest of the 19, where the median is 0.50%. On how much the price has moved, Arpico Ataraxia Cash Management Trust Fund is 11th steadiest and CAL Money Market Fund 5th.