Glossary
Formulas and sources: project-docs/methods.md.
- Price of one unit of a fund on a given day. Returns are calculated from changes in NAV.
- Direct vs Regular plan
- Same fund, same portfolio, two prices. Regular plans pay a yearly distributor commission out of the fund, so their NAV grows more slowly. Direct plans carry no commission. Held funds are assessed by their Direct plan.
- Benchmark (and TRI)
- The index a fund measures itself against, e.g. NIFTY 100 for a large-cap fund. TRI (total return index) includes dividends. Where official index data is unavailable, a low-cost index fund tracking it is used, labelled "proxy".
- CAGR
- Constant annual rate that turns the starting value into the ending value. 12% over 3 years: ₹100 → about ₹140. Periods under 1 year show the absolute change.
- XIRR
- Annual return for money invested on different dates (e.g. SIPs), weighting each amount by how long it was invested.
- Rolling returns
- Returns over every period of a given length in the fund's history, not only the latest. Shows consistency: worst and best periods, share of positive periods, share beating the benchmark.
- Volatility
- Annualised standard deviation of monthly returns. Lower = steadier.
- Maximum drawdown
- Largest fall from a previous high to a later low, e.g. −35% in March 2020. Recovery date shown on the fund page.
- Downside deviation
- Volatility counting only months below the risk-free rate (91-day T-bill). Lower is better.
- Return above the risk-free rate per unit of volatility. Compare within the same category.
- Sortino ratio
- Return above the risk-free rate per unit of downside deviation.
- Calmar ratio
- 3-year annualised return divided by the maximum drawdown over the same 3 years.
- Treynor ratio
- Return above the risk-free rate per unit of beta.
- MRAR (Morningstar Risk-Adjusted Return)
- The certain return equivalent to the fund's variable returns; more volatile funds score lower. Basis of the star ratings.
- Alpha
- Annualised return beyond what the fund's market exposure (beta) explains. Meaningful only when R² is high.
- Beta
- Sensitivity to the benchmark. 1.0 = moves in step; 0.9 = 10% less; 1.1 = 10% more.
- R²
- How closely the fund follows its benchmark, from 0 to 1. Alpha and beta are reliable above about 0.8.
- Tracking error
- Annualised standard deviation of the fund's return minus the benchmark's. Low = index-like.
- Information ratio
- Average return above the benchmark per unit of tracking error: how consistently the fund beat it. Above 0.5 is good.
- Up / down capture
- Up: share of the benchmark's rise captured in rising months (100 = all). Down: share of the fall taken in falling months. Preferred: up above 100, down below 100.
- Category (peer group)
- Funds in the same SEBI category (large cap, mid cap, ELSS…). Funds are ranked only within their category. Sector and theme funds are not ranked.
- Percentile rank
- Position within the category: 1 = best, 100 = worst. 18th of 36 ≈ better than 82% of funds. Morningstar's published procedure.
- Star rating (1 to 5)
- Based on MRAR over 3, 5 and 10 years: top 10% of a category 5★, next 22.5% 4★, middle 35% 3★, next 22.5% 2★, bottom 10% 1★. The overall rating blends the three. Calculated with Morningstar's published method; not Morningstar's own ratings.
- Risk groups (Top funds, by risk)
- Category volatility = median 3-year volatility of its funds. Categories are sorted lowest to highest and split into thirds: lower, medium and higher risk. The measures are standard; the split into thirds is not a published standard. All equity funds carry SEBI's "Very High" risk label.
Basics
Returns
Risk
Risk-adjusted return (higher is better)
Benchmark-relative
Ranks and ratings
All figures describe past performance and do not predict future returns.