Funds are financial products that pursue relative returns. The so-called "relative" refers to comparing the performance of the fund with its performance comparison benchmark. In a certain period of time, if a fund's income is better than its performance benchmark, then whether it has achieved absolute income or surpassed its peers, it should be said that the manager's management and operation of the fund is qualified; Otherwise, it is unqualified. To put it bluntly, the performance benchmark can be regarded as the "passing line" of the fund and the minimum goal that the fund should pursue in its management and operation.
Performance benchmark belongs to the information that Public Offering of Fund must disclose. Investors can know the specific content of the performance benchmark of the designated fund in the fund prospectus, fund contract and other legal documents. The performance comparison benchmark of bond funds and monetary funds will be linked to some bond indexes or deposit interest rates, while the performance comparison benchmark of stock funds such as stock funds and hybrid funds usually consists of a stock index and a bond index. The performance benchmarks of the first two funds are relatively simple and easy to understand, focusing on the performance benchmarks of equity funds.
For stock funds, there are generally two main points to pay attention to in their performance benchmarks. One is how it sets the ratio between the stock index and the bond index, and the other is which stock index it targets. The former can help you understand the risk-return level of a fund, while the latter can tell you the main investment scope and investment style of the fund.
The product designers of fund companies usually tell you how to set the benchmark of fund performance: "Take the median position according to the variety of product investment scope and find several suitable indexes to add together." For example, if the stock investment scope of Fund A is 60%~95%, then its performance comparison benchmark may be: Shanghai A-share index yield ×80%+ Shanghai government bond index yield ×20%. Conversely, the information that such a performance benchmark can convey to you includes the approximate range of fund stock investment ratio and the fund stock investment ratio under normal market conditions (80% in the above example). Knowing this, you can basically know the risk-return ratio of the fund.
In addition to the risk-return situation, the performance benchmark can also help you judge the investment style and other characteristics of the fund. The latter point is mainly achieved by observing the reference index selected by the benchmark. For another example, the stock index selected in the performance comparison benchmark of the aforementioned fund A is the Shanghai A-share index, and the performance comparison benchmark of the other fund B is: the yield of the Shanghai and Shenzhen 300 Index ×80%+ the yield of the CSI government bond index.
×20%, that is, its main reference index is the Shanghai and Shenzhen 300 Index. Because the Shanghai and Shenzhen 300 Index and the Shanghai A-share Index are close in style and ups and downs, it can be preliminarily judged that there is no essential difference between the investment styles of Fund A and Fund B. ..
However, if the performance benchmark of Fund C is: CSI 700 Index ×90%+ interbank deposit rate × 10%, then the difference between Fund C and Funds A and B will appear. CSI 700 is considered as an index representing the style of small and medium-sized stocks in the market, which means that compared with funds A and B, the investment of fund C focuses more on the growth or investment target of small and medium-sized stocks.
According to the different performance benchmarks, equity funds can be roughly divided into four categories: full market type, style type, partial debt type and absolute income type. Among them, all-market funds are based on indexes that can fully reflect the market style, and the mainstream benchmark indexes of such funds are CSI 300 and CITIC S&P 300; Style index can be divided into dividend type, small and medium-sized stock type and growth type. Representative indexes include Shanghai Stock Exchange dividend index, Tianxiang small and medium-sized stock index and CSI 700 index.
In addition, the performance benchmarks of several special funds have changed over time. HSBC Jintrust's life cycle fund is such. The company's two life-cycle funds, 20 16 and 2026, have reduced their stock positions year by year according to the product characteristics, and the weight of the stock index in the performance benchmark has also decreased accordingly. When the target investment period is reached, the benchmark of performance comparison has been adjusted to bank deposit interest rate and bond index respectively.
Performance benchmark can help you shorten the process of a fund from unfamiliar to familiar, but obviously it is not omnipotent.
The benchmark allows you to roughly lock in the lowest return range of your investment in a fund, but as for the extent to which the fund can obtain excess returns compared with the benchmark, you need to know more about the asset management capabilities of fund managers and fund companies.
In addition, although fund companies usually feel confident that the fund will never outperform the benchmark when setting the benchmark (because they will never set the benchmark too high), it has become quite difficult for the fund to outperform the benchmark in a specific time period since 2007. For example, since the A-share adjustment of 15 in April this year, about 1/3 equity funds have fallen behind their benchmarks; In 2008 and 2009, 1/3 and half of the funds were behind the benchmark. The fact is that when the market trend changes rapidly in a short period of time, the fund has no time to adjust its position, so it will be more difficult to keep up with the performance benchmark.
However, in the long run, most funds have achieved their minimum mission and exceeded the performance benchmark. The data shows that only 14% of the equity funds established for more than one year did not outperform the benchmark, among which only 10 funds significantly underperformed the benchmark, accounting for about 1/30 of the total. Therefore, the performance benchmark still has certain reference value in expressing the long-term performance of the fund.
Finally, although the performance benchmark can be regarded as the "passing line" of the long-term performance of the fund, it does not mean that the more radical the performance benchmark of the fund, the better. For example, the absolute income fund, its performance benchmark is generally
3-year or 1 ~ 2 times RMB fixed deposit interest rate, although compared with other stock funds, the risk return of this kind of fund is relatively low, but in fact this performance benchmark means that the fund aims to pursue absolute return. In the long run, the return of such funds is not necessarily weaker than that of more radical varieties.