Two legs, one quarter — the ten SIFs that were up in both
The market gave managers a clean natural experiment this quarter: a 5.85% rally into early August, then a 3.47% fall. Of the 21 SIF schemes with NAVs covering both legs, ten finished each of them in the black.
Most performance tables measure one thing: how a fund did over a stretch of market. That flatters whoever happened to be positioned for the direction the market took. The June-to-September quarter is more useful than that, because it broke neatly into two opposite halves.
The NIFTY 50 rose 5.85% from 23,405.60 on 3 June to 24,774.30 on 3 August, then fell 3.47% to 23,914.45 by 2 September. Twenty-one SIF schemes (direct plan, growth option) have published NAVs covering both legs. Ten of them were positive in the rally and positive in the fall.
Both legs, one table
Sorted by the down-leg. A fund near the top of both columns captured the rally without giving it back; one near the bottom of the right column moved with the market in both directions.
| Scheme | Up-leg (3 Jun - 3 Aug) | Down-leg (3 Aug - 3 Sep) |
|---|---|---|
| qsif Hybrid Long-Short | +5.80% | +2.56% |
| qsif Active Asset Allocator Long-Short | +11.66% | +2.41% |
| qsif Equity Ex-Top 100 Long-Short | +13.88% | +2.30% |
| qsif Sector Rotation Long-Short | +1.26% | +2.10% |
| Apex Hybrid Long-Short | +5.09% | +1.59% |
| Altiva Hybrid Long-Short | +3.50% | +0.97% |
| qsif Equity Long-Short | +8.61% | +0.55% |
| DynaSIF Active Asset Allocator Long-Short | +3.16% | +0.51% |
| Arudha Hybrid Long-Short | +2.22% | +0.13% |
| Magnum Hybrid Long-Short | +3.18% | +0.05% |
| iSIF Hybrid Long-Short | +8.47% | -0.28% |
| Titanium Equity Long-Short | +6.66% | -0.37% |
| iSIF Equity Ex-Top 100 Long-Short | +6.69% | -0.57% |
| Titanium Hybrid Long-Short | +4.09% | -0.59% |
| Arudha Equity Long-Short | +6.26% | -1.02% |
| Sapphire Equity Long-Short | +4.35% | -1.46% |
| WSIF Equity Ex-Top 100 Long-Short | +11.35% | -1.73% |
| DynaSIF Equity Long-Short | +6.63% | -2.07% |
| Diviniti Equity Long-Short | +4.23% | -2.22% |
| WSIF Equity Long-Short | +10.06% | -2.72% |
| Arthaya Equity Long-Short | +2.37% | -3.17% |
| NIFTY 50 | +5.85% | -3.47% |
What the two columns actually measure
Read across a row and you get a rough read on net exposure — the thing the category label does not tell you.
WSIF's Equity Long-Short scheme captured +10.06% of a +5.85% index leg and then -2.72% of a -3.47% one. That is the shape of a high-net-long book with good stock selection: more than the market up, most of the market down. qsif's Sector Rotation scheme did the opposite, adding only +1.26% in the rally and +2.10% in the fall — a much lower net exposure, with the return coming from somewhere other than market direction.
Neither is better than the other. They are different instruments, and the quarter simply happened to suit the second shape. Reverse the order of the two legs and the same table would read very differently.
Dispersion is the real story
Inside a single SEBI category, over the identical one-month down-leg:
| Category | Schemes | Best | Worst | Spread |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Equity Ex-Top 100 Long-Short | 5 | +4.38% | -1.73% | 6.1 pp |
| Equity Long-Short | 10 | +2.72% | -3.17% | 5.9 pp |
| Hybrid Long-Short | 11 | +2.56% | -0.69% | 3.3 pp |
| Active Asset Allocator Long-Short | 3 | +2.41% | +0.51% | 1.9 pp |
Nearly six percentage points separating the ends of the equity long-short category in a single month is a large number for funds that sit under the same three words in a SEBI circular. The category tells you the universe a manager may trade and the limits on the short book. It does not tell you the net exposure they chose to run inside those limits — and over a month like August, net exposure explained most of the difference between one SIF and the next.
That is the practical argument for looking at a scheme's own NAV history and holdings rather than its category label, which is what the attribution page is built to show.
Caveats
- Short histories. No SIF has a two-year record; several here have under six months. Two legs of one quarter is a small sample, not a track record.
- The legs are not symmetric. The up-leg is two months, the down-leg one. The columns are not comparable to each other in magnitude, only in sign and in relative behaviour within each column.
- Direct plan, growth option, NAV-to-NAV. Regular plans differ by distributor commission.
- Schemes launched after 3 June 2026 are excluded — nine of the thirty schemes in the down-leg table lack a full up-leg, including the strongest one-month performer. The companion note on the August drawdown covers the wider set.
*Source: AMFI SIF NAV disclosures as at 3 September 2026; NIFTY 50 closing levels as at 2 September
- Past performance is not indicative of future results.*