First Capital Fixed income Fund vs NAMAL Income Fund

First Capital Fixed income Fund is run by First Capital Asset Management Limited and NAMAL Income Fund by National Asset Management Limited, so this compares two houses as well as two funds. Both are income / fixed income 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 0.60% 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.

Over the 180 days to the date shown, First Capital Fixed income Fund returned +4.94% against NAMAL Income Fund's +0.92%, a gap of 4.02 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.

Both have moved by a similar amount, with annualised volatility of 1.44% and 1.86%. For two funds in the same category that is the expected result, and it means neither has taken noticeably more price movement than the other to arrive at its return.

Among the 19 income / fixed income funds we price daily, First Capital Fixed income Fund ranks 4th on 180-day return and NAMAL Income Fund 19th, against a category median of +3.71% over the same window. On fee they sit 2nd and 12th cheapest of the 19, where the median is 0.50%. On how much the price has moved, First Capital Fixed income Fund is 13th steadiest and NAMAL Income Fund 15th.