Guides

A single point-to-point return depends entirely on the two dates you pick. Rolling returns test every possible window instead, so they show the range of outcomes a real investor could have had, not just one lucky or unlucky pair of dates.

A calendar-year return measures one specific window, 1 January to 31 December, and nothing else. It is exactly as arbitrary as any other 12-month window, but because it lines up with how we talk about years, it gets quoted as if it were special.

Equity is an asset class. Large Cap is a category within that asset class. Mixing the two up is a common, easy-to-avoid mistake that leads straight into the wrong peer group when comparing funds.

A fund's return only means something next to funds that took similar risk to get there. Comparing across SEBI categories compares different mandates, different risk levels, and different market segments, not manager skill.

A star rating compresses many dimensions into one symbol, and that compression tends to favour large, well-known funds over genuinely better ones. The real evidence: fund size barely correlates with how well a fund actually ranks against its peers.

A fund's holdings disclosure lists every stock or bond it owns, how much, and what share of the fund's assets each position represents. It is the clearest window into what you actually own, updated monthly.

Every fund's sector mix differs a little from its category peers. The size of that gap, the tilt, shows where the manager is making an active bet versus simply holding what every other fund in the category also holds.

Investors tend to put the most new money into whichever category just performed best. That pattern shows up clearly in real flow data - and it says something about investor behaviour, not about where returns are headed next.

A fund can rank in the top 5% of its category on a 1-year window and sit at the median on a 3-year window, with nothing about the fund itself having changed. The window you pick is as much a part of the answer as the fund you pick.

A fund's 3-year return from a single point-to-point calculation and its 3-year rolling median can differ by several percentage points, both computed correctly from the same NAV history. The gap is methodology, not error.

Mutual fund NAV is published once a day, after markets close, and not every scheme publishes at the same moment. A small, normal lag between a fund's as-of date and today is expected - a large one is worth checking.