Micro-caps are where the market whispers before it speaks — the price starts ticking up in names most people don’t track yet, liquidity improves a bit, and for a short window you can be early. Alpha Hunt is built exactly for that window.

The Part of the Market that moves first
When risk switches on in India, it almost never starts with the Nifty 50. It leaks down the ladder — large → mid → small — and in the last leg you suddenly see the names beyond the Nifty 500 start to tick up. That layer is now formal: NSE put out the Nifty Microcap 250, “the top 250 companies beyond the Nifty 500, selected by market cap,” so we can actually watch what used to be the untracked corner.

This is also the layer that reacts hardest to flows. In months like August 2025, when equity MFs still took in ₹33,000+ crore but small/mid flows slowed 12–18% because people were nervous on valuations, this lower end felt it first. In March 2024, when SEBI/AMFI asked funds to stress-test small and mid, selling pressure showed up first in the least liquid names. That’s the reality of micro-caps in India: they wake up first, and they feel fear first.

The problem with “let’s just buy micro-caps”
Micro-caps are where excess return can come from — the move from “ignored” to “noticed” is often 30–70% in a few months — but this part of the market is also the one SEBI keeps pointing at when it talks about froth, exit risk and the need for stress tests. You can’t run it like a large-cap book. You have to throw out the untradeable names first, or else the portfolio will look brilliant on paper and terrible in execution.

That’s the gap Alpha Hunt is designed to close: stay where price is waking up in the Nifty Microcap 250, but only for names you can actually buy and actually get out of.

What Alpha Hunt really is
Alpha Hunt is a higher-octane, momentum-first, 18–25 stock micro-cap basket. It is 100% equity, 100% India, and it expects to rotate more than your small-cap or multi cap sleeve. It is not trying to own every micro-cap theme (that’s how you end up holding sleepers for a year); it is trying to stay close to the pockets where price is the first signal of renewed attention.

How the hunt works

1. ̥̥Start with the NSE / Nifty Microcap 250: this is the formal pool of “beyond Nifty 500” names.
2. Strip out the problems: that month’s thin, event-heavy, or otherwise hard-to-exit stocks go out. We follow the same spirit as the SEBI/AMFI liquidity guidance to MFs — if you can’t exit in a stressed tape, don’t size it.
3. Rank what’s left on short-to-intermediate momentum inside micro-caps: not versus Nifty 50, but versus its own peer set, because micro-caps move in bunches.
4. Break ties using liquidity, volatility that’s too jumpy to size, and crowding: this is how we pick the sturdier movers, not just the noisiest ones.
5. Build the basket: 18–25 names, rank-aware sizing, but with stock and sector ceilings so one spike or one fashionable micro theme doesn’t hijack the whole month.
6. Refresh monthly: pull in fresher movers, retire names whose strength or liquidity faded; touch mid-month only if a rule breaks.

What this gives you is not a screen — it’s a live, tradeable hunt list.

What the path will actually look like
When micro-caps are getting love — the same months AMFI reports record equity inflows and even small/mid buckets hit all-time highs — Alpha Hunt will look alive, because the signals will have plenty to choose from. When the regulator tone is cautious and MFs report a 12–18% drop in small/mid flows like in Sept 2025, the basket will cool faster, because many names will fail the liquidity or momentum checks. That’s supposed to happen. This sleeve is built to breathe with risk-on / risk-off, not to flatten it.

And yes — drawdowns will be sharper than in small-caps. These are sub-500 names, in an index NSE itself says needs semi-annual review to keep churn in check. That’s why we keep 18–25 stocks, not 10–12: it spreads execution risk without diluting the hunt.

Who should actually hold this
Alpha Hunt belongs with investors who already have a core portfolio and want an aggressive satellite; people who understand momentum cycles; people who won’t panic if this sleeve gives back 6–8% in a month when the market runs to safety. It is not a replacement for a diversified, long-only equity plan — it’s the part of the portfolio that goes looking for alpha when the lower end of the market starts to move.

Alpha Hunt keeps you parked where India’s tiniest listed names are just beginning to wake up — and because it’s filtered and rules-led, it tries to make that hunt executable, not just exciting on a PowerPoint.