Al Mal Fund gets full marks from the experts on returns, volatility and fee structure. In the UAE’s equity universe, Al Mal Capital UAE Equity Fund has performed the best among five of its peers, outperforming the MSCI UAE index quite handsomely in the last three years, according to Zawya.com’s recently released ranking of the region’s funds. While the fund is down 5.93 per cent between March 2007 and March 2010, the decline of its peers during the same period has ranged between 25 per cent and 64 per cent. The returns of Al Mal Capital UAE Equity Fund had a dramatic decline towards the end of 2008, but made a strong recovery in 2009. 

According to Zawya.com’s four criteria of fund returns, fund volatility (the risk factor), fund compliance and fund fees, the Al Mal fund received the full 30 per cent allocated for the first and the full 20 per cent for the second as it had the lowest volatility compared to the others in the category. In terms of fund compliance it accumulated 25 per cent out of the allocated 30 per cent as, according to Zawya.com, the fund manager administered the fund and it was not serviced independently. Finally for fund fees, it received the full 20 per cent allocated to this criteria, incorporating the lowest fee structure among its peers, the information portal said in its comments. Gulf News spoke to the fund manager Tarek Qaqish and asked him how he weathered the storm and what lessons he learnt in the past two years. Qaqish shared some investment tips too.