ASTRUE Money Market Fund vs CT Smith Money Market Fund

ASTRUE Money Market Fund is run by Asset Trust Management (Pvt) Ltd and CT Smith Money Market Fund by CT Smith Asset Management (Pvt) 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 two charge almost the same management fee, 0.65% and 0.60% a year. In a category where the funds hold similar instruments, a fee difference is often the largest durable difference between two products; here it is not, so the comparison rests on what each holds and how much its price has moved.

Their 180-day returns are close, +4.16% and +3.90%, which is common between two money market funds holding similar instruments over the same stretch. When returns converge like this, the fee and the price variability below are what actually separate the two over time.

They have not moved by the same amount. CT Smith Money Market Fund has annualised volatility of 0.32% against ASTRUE Money Market Fund's 0.72%, meaning ASTRUE Money Market Fund's unit price has swung roughly 2.3 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.

CT Smith Money Market Fund opens at LKR 1,000 where ASTRUE Money Market Fund requires LKR 10,000, so for a smaller first investment only one of the two is available at all.

Among the 19 money market funds we price daily, ASTRUE Money Market Fund ranks 11th on 180-day return and CT Smith Money Market Fund 15th, against a category median of +4.18% over the same window. On fee they sit 15th and 14th cheapest of the 19, where the median is 0.50%. On how much the price has moved, ASTRUE Money Market Fund is 13th steadiest and CT Smith Money Market Fund 3rd.