Our Philosophy
Current > Comfortable

Markets rarely reward the same pocket for long. One quarter it is PSUs, then industrials, then a burst in mid-cap financials — and just when portfolios settle in, leadership shifts. What we saw, again and again, was that investors could spot the move but not stay with it. They bought what had already run, held it for too long, and ended up observing the trend more than capturing it.

Momentum Prime was built to close that gap. It is a portfolio that stays where the strength is right now, steps away when that strength fades, and does all of it through rules instead of opinions. The philosophy is straightforward: current > comfortable — we would rather hold what is working today than what was working three months ago.

The Problem We Saw
When we looked at actual investor behaviour, three patterns kept showing up. First, theme-chasing without exits. Investors are quick to identify “this part of the market is moving”, but much slower to admit “this part has stopped”. That’s where returns leak.

Second, index as comfort, not as edge. A broad index is great for stability, but by design it averages out leadership. If the goal is to outperform, you cannot stay equally exposed to winners and clear laggards.

Third, discretionary fatigue. Active investors get tired of deciding every month, “should I still hold this?” Tired investors make slow decisions; slow decisions hurt momentum.

Momentum Prime takes that decision-making burden away from the user and places it on a published schedule. The portfolio, not the investor’s mood, decides when a name comes in or goes out.

Why a Rule-First Approach
Markets can turn for reasons that are not obvious in stock-level news — liquidity thinning in a pocket, rotation into another factor, rapid profit-taking. If the portfolio relies only on human judgement, it will sometimes react late. A rules-first framework makes the response predictable: same inputs, same decision. In Momentum Prime, rules define what we can buy, what we should prefer, and when we must leave — even if the stock was a strong performer earlier. Present strength is valued higher than past success.

Introducing Momentum Prime
Momentum Prime is an all-equity, momentum-led, concentrated portfolio that typically holds 12–18 stocks. It is not meant to mirror the market; it is meant to represent the part of the market that is leading now within an investable universe.

We begin with the Nifty 500. From this universe we remove names that fail our investability and liquidity checks so that the final basket can actually be owned. Eligible stocks are then scored on multi-horizon price momentum, with additional checks on liquidity quality, volatility reasonableness, and sector crowding. From this ranked list, the portfolio selects the top names and sizes them with stock-level and sector-level caps so that one runaway theme does not hijack the whole book.

Where Momentum Prime differs from a simple “top momentum” list is in its operating rhythm. The portfolio is refreshed on a defined monthly schedule so that new leaders can be brought in and fading names can be exited. Between two scheduled reviews, pre-set exit conditions can still remove a stock that breaks down. To avoid pointless back-and-forth, buffer bands are used so that tiny score differences do not create trades. The result is a process that is active, but explainable.

Why momentum and Why Now
This approach fits the current Indian market structure. Liquidity does not reach every stock at the same time. Narratives travel faster than fundamentals. Mid- and small-cap pockets can trend hard for two to six months and then cool off quickly. A static portfolio leaves that opportunity on the table. A rules-based momentum portfolio can say, on a fixed date, “this is where the market is paying attention right now — so this is what we will hold.” That is very different from simply buying whatever went up last week.

Investment Universe and Risk Thinking
Because the universe is restricted to the Nifty 500 and then filtered, the portfolio reduces the risk of drifting into names that look good in a screen but are hard to trade in reality. Because positions and sectors are capped, single-theme risk is contained. Because exits are rule-led, there is less temptation to hold on to broken trends.

Even so, this remains a high-risk, momentum-first, all-equity style. It will not diversify you across asset classes. It will not promise index-like drawdowns. It will do its best work when markets are trending and leadership is narrow. It can lag when markets are choppy, when value or mean reversion is in favor, or when leadership flips faster than the monthly cycle.

Performance Philosophy
Momentum Prime is new and will build its live record over time. Back-tests and historical simulations can illustrate how the rules would have behaved across regimes, but they do not represent actual or guaranteed returns. Real-world frictions, sudden reversals and periods of low breadth can all produce stretches of underperformance. That is normal for momentum and should be expected.

Who Momentum Prime is for
This portfolio is for investors who are willing to let data, not discretion, decide which stocks deserve to be held; for investors who can implement or track monthly changes; and for those who understand that a portfolio can change its face through the year and still be following the same philosophy. It is not for investors seeking very low churn, index-like behavior, or buy-and-forget comfort.

In essence, Momentum Prime formalizes a belief many market participants already hold: if the market moves in waves, the portfolio should be allowed to move too — but it should move for the same reasons, every time.

Disclaimer: Equity and momentum-oriented strategies are exposed to market risk and may underperform broad indices for extended periods. Backtested or simulated numbers, if presented, are for illustration and do not represent actual investor experience. Please assess your risk tolerance before allocating.