Mutual Fund Rankings
Every diversified equity fund in India, ranked inside its own SEBI category on rolling returns rather than the single point-to-point CAGR every other site leads with. Direct plans only, computed from AMFI's own NAV history — with the method published in full so you can disagree with it.
A 5-year return tells you what happened to one person who bought on one particular day. Change that day by three months and the number often moves by a third. So the ranking is built on rolling returns — every 3-year holding period across a common seven-year window, stepped weekly, roughly 200 of them per fund — which tells you what happened to everyone who bought.
- One common window for everybody. Every fund is scored over the same trailing seven years, never over its own lifetime. Drawdown and volatility depend entirely on which years you measure, so a fund launched after March 2020 would otherwise look preternaturally safe beside one that lived through it. Seven years is the shortest window that both contains a real crash and holds enough 3-year windows (about 200 start dates) for a win rate to separate anything — over five years nearly every decent fund scores 100%, which ranks nothing.
- Ranked only within a category. A small cap's 22% and a large cap's 14% are not the same achievement. Any table that ranks them together is measuring the asset class, not the manager.
- The benchmark is the category itself — an equal-weighted index of every fund in it, chained from daily returns so funds that launched partway through still count for the period they existed.
- Direct plans only. A regular plan carries a distributor commission inside its NAV, so ranking one measures the commission as much as the manager. It also means the returns here are already net of the fund's expense ratio — there's no separate cost column because the cost is already in every number.
- Seven years of history minimum. A fund has to cover the whole scoring window to be ranked in it. That leaves some genuinely good young funds unranked, which is the honest answer — a fund whose entire life is one bull market hasn't been tested yet. They're listed separately, with their record so far.
- What's missing: AUM, portfolio holdings and manager tenure have no clean public feed, so they're not here. A manager change can invalidate a track record entirely — check that before you act on any row in this table.
This is a research screener, not advice. Funds are ranked by the published quantitative method above — a rank is a statement about a fund's past record against its peers, not a recommendation to buy. Past performance does not predict future returns, and equity funds can and do lose money. ScalperSense is not a SEBI registered investment adviser. Consider your own goals and tax position, or speak to a registered adviser, before investing.
How these rankings are built, and what they leave out
Every diversified equity scheme in India, ranked inside its own SEBI category, computed from AMFI's daily NAV file rather than taken from anybody's factsheet. The method is worth understanding because most published fund rankings are built differently and worse.
Rolling returns, not point-to-point
A trailing three-year return is a single measurement between two dates, and it is enormously sensitive to which two. A fund whose window happens to start at a market bottom looks brilliant; the same fund measured a quarter earlier looks ordinary. This is the most common way fund performance tables mislead, and it is not usually deliberate — it is just what happens when you pick one start date.
Rolling returns compute the three-year return from every possible starting point in the history and look at the distribution. A fund that has delivered consistently scores well across all of them. A fund that had one extraordinary year carrying an otherwise flat record does not. It is a harder test and a fairer one.
Downside capture and drawdown
Return alone ranks the fund that made 18% with a 45% peak-to-trough fall above the one that made 16% with a 25% fall. Most investors would prefer the second, and more importantly most investors hold the second — a fund you sell in the middle of its worst quarter returns nothing like its published number.
So the ranking also weighs downside capture, how much of the market's falls the fund participated in, and maximum drawdown, the worst peak-to-trough loss in its record. Those two describe the experience of owning it, which is what determines whether you are still holding it when the returns arrive.
Why category matters and why the plans are direct
SEBI's scheme categorisation defines what each fund is allowed to hold, so comparing a small-cap fund to a large-cap one measures the categories rather than the managers. Every ranking here is inside a category for that reason.
Figures are for direct plans. Regular plans carry distributor commission inside the expense ratio, typically around three-quarters of a percentage point a year, and compounded over a couple of decades that gap is large enough to change the outcome materially. If you hold regular plans, the returns you have actually received are lower than these.
What none of this tells you
Past returns do not predict future returns, and this is better documented for mutual funds than for almost anything else in finance — top-quartile funds land in every quartile over the following period at close to the rate chance would produce.
Nor does NAV history know that the manager changed, that the fund's mandate drifted, or that a strategy that worked at ₹500 crore is harder at ₹50,000 crore. This ranking is a filter for a shortlist, and everything that decides whether a fund is right for you — horizon, tax position, what you already own — is outside it. None of it is investment advice; see the disclaimer.