Why NAV is never truly “live”
A stock price updates every second the market is open. A mutual fund’s NAV does not work that way. It is calculated once, after markets close, using the closing prices of everything the fund holds, and published later that evening or the next morning. There is no such thing as a live, intraday mutual fund NAV, by design: the whole portfolio has to be valued first.
That means the NAV you see is always as of the end of the most recent business day the fund has published for, never the literal present moment. A short lag between “today” and the NAV’s as-of date is completely normal and not a sign of stale or broken data.
How the lag actually looks, across the whole fund universe
Here is the real distribution of NAV as-of dates across every fund in the Punji database, taken on 2026-10-23:
| NAV as-of date | Number of funds |
|---|---|
| 2026-10-23 | 1,767 |
| 2026-10-22 | 57 |
| 2026-10-15 | 1 |
| 2026-10-01 | 4 |
| 2026-09-24 | 1 |
The overwhelming majority of funds, 96.6%, had published their NAV for the most recent business day by the time this snapshot was taken. A much smaller number were one business day behind, and a handful trailed further. That tail is not a sign of a broken pipeline; some fund houses or scheme types (for example funds holding overseas securities, where the underlying market closes at a different time) publish slightly later than the bulk of the industry.
What causes a real lag
- Weekends and market holidays. No new NAV is calculated on a day markets are closed, so the as-of date simply stays where it was.
- Overseas holdings. A fund that holds foreign securities depends on that market’s own closing prices and reporting, which can arrive after Indian markets have already closed.
- AMC publishing delays. Occasionally an individual fund house is late uploading its NAV file to AMFI, which delays that fund specifically without affecting the rest of the industry.
- New or recently launched schemes. A scheme in its first few days can have gaps in its NAV history before regular daily publishing settles in.
How much lag is normal, and when to be concerned
A one-business-day lag is routine and expected for essentially every fund, every day. A lag of several days for a single fund, when the rest of the industry is current, is unusual and worth a second look; it may be a genuinely stale data feed for that specific scheme rather than a normal publishing delay. A fund that has gone silent for weeks, with no NAV update at all, has likely closed, merged, or stopped reporting, and that should be checked directly against the AMC.
Frequently asked questions
Is a 1-day-old NAV a problem?
No. It reflects that NAV is published once per business day, after markets close, so a figure dated yesterday on any given morning is completely normal, not evidence of stale data.
Why do some funds lag more than others?
Usually because of overseas holdings, which depend on a market in a different time zone, or because an individual AMC was late publishing that day. It is rarely the same cause for every lagging fund.
How often does Punji refresh NAV data?
Daily, pulling each fund’s latest published NAV from AMFI as soon as it becomes available. A fund’s as-of date on Punji matches what that fund itself has published, not a fixed daily timestamp applied to every scheme.
WHAT THIS MEANS FOR YOU Before flagging a NAV as “wrong” or “stale,” check the as-of date shown against the number of days the fund is genuinely behind, not against today’s calendar date. A one-day gap is standard practice across the industry, not a data problem specific to one site.
METHODOLOGY Distribution of latest NAV as-of dates across the full Punji fund database, taken on 2026-10-23. Data: Punji fund database, sourced from AMFI’s daily NAV publication. Not investment advice.