ARTHUM
// 02 — Portfolio Management

A concentrated portfolio, held in your own name.

Portfolio Management Services suit investors who have outgrown a mutual fund portfolio and want a focused, high-conviction strategy run by a SEBI-registered portfolio manager — with every share sitting in their own demat account.

What PMS actually is

A SEBI-registered portfolio manager runs a strategy on your behalf under a one-to-one agreement. Unlike a mutual fund, you are not buying units of a pooled scheme — the securities are bought in your own name, in a demat account opened for you. The minimum investment prescribed by SEBI is ₹50 lakh.

Most PMS strategies hold 15–30 stocks against a diversified fund's 50–70. That concentration is the point, and it is also the risk.

What we help with

  • Deciding whether PMS is right for you at all — often a mutual fund portfolio is the better answer
  • Shortlisting strategies by mandate: large-cap, mid & small-cap, flexicap, thematic
  • Discretionary vs non-discretionary vs advisory mandates
  • Reading disclosure documents — the part almost nobody reads
  • Comparing fee structures: fixed fee, performance fee, hurdle rate and high-water mark
  • Understanding taxation — gains are taxed in your hands, on each underlying transaction
  • Onboarding paperwork, demat and power-of-attorney formalities
  • Ongoing review of performance against the stated benchmark, not against a good year

How we evaluate a portfolio manager

  1. Strategy consistency — does the current portfolio still look like the mandate it was sold as?
  2. Post-fee returns — headline returns are gross. Fees change the picture materially.
  3. Drawdowns — how the strategy behaved in 2018, 2020 and 2022, not just the last three years.
  4. Churn — high turnover means higher costs and a bigger annual tax drag for you.
  5. Concentration — top-5 weight, sector weight, and liquidity of the smallest holdings.
  6. Fee structure — a performance fee without a proper high-water mark is a red flag.
  7. Team stability — the fund manager who built the track record should still be running it.

Who it isn't for

If ₹50 lakh is most of your investable corpus, PMS is the wrong product. It works as a satellite allocation for an investor whose core is already built, whose emergency fund and protection are in place, and who can genuinely sit through a 30% drawdown without redeeming.

Concentration is what creates the outperformance and what creates the pain. Both come from the same source.

PMS investments are subject to market risks. There is no assurance or guarantee of returns. Please read the Disclosure Document of the portfolio manager carefully before investing.