Among the top five gainers, three funds are from SBI Mutual Fund. The top gainer was Magnum Taxgain, the open-end equity-linked savings plan from SBI Mutual Fund. The net asset value of the fund vaulted by a little over 8 per cent from Rs 41.06 on December 30 to Rs 44.35 on January 3, thus beating the Sensex rise of 7.4 per cent on Monday. Among the fund's investments as on December 1, 1999, almost 32 per cent is invested in the four IT stocks of SSI, Infosys, Ramco and Aftek Infosys. All the four stocks had hit the upper end of the circuit filter and remained frozen after exhausting the daily limit of 8 per cent. The fund also holds more than 13 per cent in the two media stocks of Zee Telefilms and Sri Adhikari Brothers. Both the stocks had risen by 8 per cent on Monday.

``Almost all the stocks in Magnum's portfolio ended with 8 per cent gains on Monday and that is why the fund topped the charts. While sectoral funds posted handsome gains, not all the stocks in their portfolio posted 8 per cent gains and most of them underperformed the Sensex,'' says an analyst.

Tata Core, the open-end equity fund from Tata AMC, also managed to beat the Sensex with a gain of 7.92 per cent from Rs 23.86 to Rs 25.75. The fund has been rechristened Tata IT Sector Fund with more than 70 per cent of its holdings in IT stocks. In fact, the fund has almost 30 per cent of its assets in a single stock, VisualSoft which shot up by Rs 625.80 or 8 per cent to Rs 8448.75 on Monday. Among the other IT stocks, the fund has Infosys, Pentafour, Satyam, Digital Equipment, PSI Data, Fujitsu, Sonata Software, SQL and SSI.

While Tata Core managed to deliver handsome returns during Monday's spurt, the fund will also see a sharp dip in NAV if VisualSoft goes into a tailspin. The NAV of the fund can be extremely volatile since it is heavily concentrated in VisualSoft.

Among the other top five gainers were the tax saver from Alliance Mutual Fund, Alliance Tax Relief '96 and SBI MF's Magnum Multiplier Plus and Magnum Global funds. The Alliance ELSS shot up by 7.8 per cent to Rs 94.22 while Magnum Multiplier Plus was a close second with a gain of 7.76 per cent to Rs 34.98. The NAV of Magnum Global moved up from Rs 18.76 to Rs 20.21, a gain of 7.73 per cent.

The other funds that managed to beat the Sensex rise of 7.39 per cent were Tata Life Science and Technology, Magnum IT Fund and the equity fund from DSP-Merrill Lynch. As many as 22 funds appreciated by more than 7 per cent during Monday's spurt.

``If one were evaluate the gains recorded by the funds, they have been able to race ahead of each other by a mere percentage point. As many as 20 funds also posted gains in excess of 6 per cent but less than 7 per cent. This reflects that most of the equity funds are fairly concentrated in certain number of stocks,'' says an analyst.