Launched in March 1996, Taurus Libra Taxshield, is an open-ended equity scheme. The objective of the scheme is to provide long term capital appreciation over the life of scheme by investing predominantly in equities. The scheme takes around 80-85% exposure to equity, while exposure to bonds and money market instruments is up to 20% of the corpus.

The scheme has lock-in period of three years from the date of allotment which will be mandatory to get the tax rebate under Section 88 of the Income-Tax Act.

On the returns front, the fund has consistently outpaced its benchmark BSE-200 index. As on Nov. 28, 2007 the fund`s 6-month and 1-year returns was 59.12% and 75.55% respectively as compared with its benchmark`s 34.80% and 46.03% returns respectively. Taurus Libra Taxshield`s 2-year and 3-year returns on the same date stand at 29.01% and 38.81% respectively as against BSE-200`s 45.10% and 44.07%.

Talking about the fund`s stock picking strategy R K Gupta, explains, ``at present, we are picking up only pro-active growth oriented stocks which primarily move in tandem with the market for all the schemes of Taurus Mutual Fund including Libra Tax Shield``.

A considerable amount of fluctuation had been observed in the performance of the fund taking into the consideration the performance in the month of August- September. The fund has witnesseing its own share of losses but has a remarkable comeback in the curent year.

Elaborating on the trends witnessed by the fund Gupta stated that as the scheme has a lock-in period of 3 years, the investment strategy earlier was to pick value stocks which had the potential to grow over a period of time so that better returns could be provided to investors at the time of maturity.

However, when it was observed that value stocks so picked up were not moving in tandem with the market, thereby upsetting movement in the NAV, the strategy was changed to pick up pro-active stocks. This change has started yielding good results which can be seen from the appreciation in the NAV in the last one year.

When queried about the current rupee rise and the setback taken by the IT sectors R K Gupta informed, ``As per our analysis, Rupee is likely to be depreciated for short term on account of the reduced inflow of FIIs money in the next 1 months time till fresh allocation is made for the emerging market. Beside, the outflow of the Dollar is expected to increase on account of heavy import of Crude Oil, FIIs redemption etc. In such a scenario, frontline I.T stocks are likely to move up and we will take the decision accordingly.``

The fund has stood on a separate pedestal as a comeback fund, going forward those who manage the fund are of the view that the capital market is likely to be remain volatile and can move up after the consolidation at the present level. Therefore, it is suggested that this volatility can be used by the retail investors to enter the market at the time of correction provided investment is made for a longer period i.e. about six months or more. Further, it is advisable that in such a volatile scenario, investor should avoid leveraging their position and reduce exposure in F&O segment. On a safer side, part of the investment portfolio can be shifted to the diversified Mutual Fund schemes instead of investing directly in the stock market.

Thus, if investments need to be made taking into consideration long tern returns, and the needed tax rebates `Taurus Libra Taxshield` is worth considering.