I think I accidentally married Mahindra & Mahindra. Not once. Not twice. Multiple times. It’s in my large-cap index fund, it sneaked in via a “quality” factor ETF, it photobombed my “India EV/Manufacturing” theme, and then I also bought the stock directly because, obviously, tractors are cool. Sprinkle in a lender that loves auto loans and a tire company, and voilà: my portfolio is basically an M&M-themed thali.
I’m trying to stop this serial monogamy with a single corporate group without detonating taxes or my sanity. Looking for practical, India-specific brainpower on:
Group-level exposure audit: How do you measure and cap exposure to a single corporate group across direct stocks, multiple mutual funds, and ETFs without a 40-tab spreadsheet and a wrist brace? Any tools/workflows that actually handle fund look-through and promoter group cross-holdings?
Hidden overlap detection: My “smart beta” and “theme” funds seem to all wear different hats but show up at the same M&M party. Any reliable way to quantify overlap across funds and then set hard caps for a group or sector? Do you use a fixed % ceiling per corporate group?
Supply-chain concentration: If I own M&M, an auto NBFC, a tire company, and a steel producer, am I just 4x long the same auto cycle wearing disguises? How do you measure and curb “economic theme” exposure beyond simple sector tags?
Hedging without selling: If I want to keep the long-term holding period but dial down idiosyncratic risk, what’s actually workable in India?
- Single-stock options on M&M for collars or protective puts: realistic liquidity/costs, or just theoretical?
- Pair trades (e.g., long M&M, short a peer) to trim beta while keeping the LTCG clock running-sane or widowmaker?
- Index/sector hedges that don’t hedge away the whole portfolio-anything that tracks the auto cycle reasonably without massive basis risk?
Rebalance tactics that don’t anger the tax gods: Do you favor using fresh cash to dilute exposure, trimming only funds first (vs direct stock), or tax-loss harvesting with near substitutes? Any India-specific gotchas I should know when doing “close but not identical” switches?
Look-through math: For corporate groups with listed subs and cross-holdings, has anyone built a simple method to avoid double-counting exposure? Or is the answer “accept the chaos and diversify elsewhere”?
Practical position sizing: What’s your rule of thumb for max exposure to a single corporate group in India, given cyclicality and index weight drift? 5%? 10%? “If it shows up in three funds, it gets punished”?
If you’ve battled the “conglomerate creep” monster and lived to tell the tale, how did you:
1) discover it,
2) measure it,
3) fix it,
4) keep it from coming back wearing a factor-ETF mustache?
Bonus points for any workflow that doesn’t require me to become a part-time forensic accountant or develop feelings for spreadsheets.
