Senfin Shariah Balanced Fund vs Senfin Shariah Income Fund

Both funds are run by Senfin Asset Management (Pvt) Ltd, so this is a comparison within one house rather than between two. That removes a variable: the same investment team, the same operational setup and the same trustee arrangements sit behind each. What is left to separate them is what each fund is mandated to hold and what it charges for doing so.

The two charge almost the same management fee, 0.60% 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, Senfin Shariah Income Fund returned +3.06% against Senfin Shariah Balanced Fund's −7.52%, a gap of 10.58 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. Senfin Shariah Income Fund has annualised volatility of 0.70% against Senfin Shariah Balanced Fund's 15.14%, meaning Senfin Shariah Balanced Fund's unit price has swung roughly 21.5 times as much day to day. Their largest peak-to-trough falls over the period we hold prices for were −0.20% and −13.53%. Volatility describes how the price has behaved, not how likely a loss is, and a fund that has been steady can still fall.