CAL Gilt Trading Fund vs First Capital Gilt Edged Fund

CAL Gilt Trading Fund is run by Capital Alliance Investments Ltd and First Capital Gilt Edged Fund by First Capital Asset Management Limited, so this compares two houses as well as two funds. Both are gilt / short-term treasury 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, 0.50% and 0.50% 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, +3.32% and +3.81%, which is common between two gilt / short-term treasury 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. CAL Gilt Trading Fund has annualised volatility of 0.21% against First Capital Gilt Edged Fund's 1.12%, meaning First Capital Gilt Edged Fund's unit price has swung roughly 5.3 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.

CAL Gilt Trading Fund opens at LKR 100 where First Capital Gilt Edged Fund requires LKR 1,000, so for a smaller first investment only one of the two is available at all.

Among the 8 gilt / short-term treasury funds we price daily, CAL Gilt Trading Fund ranks 4th on 180-day return and First Capital Gilt Edged Fund 2nd, against a category median of +3.11% over the same window. On fee they sit 1st and 1st cheapest of the 8, where the median is 0.50%. On how much the price has moved, CAL Gilt Trading Fund is 1st steadiest and First Capital Gilt Edged Fund 5th.