Investors remained bearish on gold exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in June and pulled out Rs 80 crore from this instrument, taking the total to Rs 228 crore in the first quarter of the current financial year, mainly on account of profit-booking.

Trading in Gold ETF segment has been tepid in the last three financial years. The funds witnessed an outflow of Rs 903 crore, Rs 1,475 crore and Rs 2,293 crore in 2015-16, 2014-15 and 2013-14, respectively.

The pace of outflow, however, slowed down in 2015-16 fiscal as against the preceding two years on account of sluggish equity market.

“Indian Gold ETFs continue to witness outflows with more investors seen exiting the yellow metal. This could largely be on account of investors booking profits who would have bought at lower levels around and seeing good returns in a small pan of time,” Quantum AMC Senior Fund Manager (Alternative Investments) Chirag Mehta said.

Also, investments in stocks and bonds have being doing well and therefore investors may likely be chasing those assets at the expense of gold, he added.

According to the latest data available with the Association of Mutual Funds in India (AMFI), Gold ETFs witnessed a net outflow of Rs 80 crore in June, another Rs 79 crore in May and Rs 69 crore in April.

This takes the total outflow to Rs 228 crore in April-June quarter of the ongoing fiscal. In comparison, Gold ETFs had seen an outflow of Rs 231 crore in the first quarter of 2015-16.

However, the asset base of gold funds rose to Rs 6,645 crore at the end of June from Rs 6,159 crore in May-end.

Mutual fund sector has 14 gold-based schemes, which have been in the market since 2006-07.

Demand for gold ETFs has steadily fallen in the past few years. These products have seen an outflow as gold prices are correcting and equities have given good returns to investors.

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