Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI)
Investor Education Programme

Basics of Mutual Funds and their operations

Chapter XIII

NAV reflects MF scheme-performance 

The performance of a scheme is reflected in its net asset value (NAV) which is disclosed on a daily basis in case of open-ended schemes and on weekly basis in case of close-ended schemes. The NAVs of mutual funds are required to be published in newspapers. The NAVs are also available on the web sites of fund houses. All MFs are also required to put their NAVs on the web site of Association of Mutual Funds in India (AMFI), www.amfiindia.com, and so that the investors can access NAVs of all MFs at one place.

The MFs are also required to publish their performance in the form of half-yearly results which also include their returns/yields over a period of time. i.e., last six months, 1 year, 3 years, 5 years, and since inception of schemes. Investors can also look into other details like percentage of expenses of total assets as these have an effect on the yield and other useful information in the same half-yearly format.

The MFs are also required to send annual report or abridged annual report to the unit-holders at the end of the year.

Various studies on MF schemes including yields of different schemes are being published by the financial newspapers on a weekly basis. Apart from these, many research agencies also publish research reports on performance of mutual funds including the ranking of various schemes in terms of their performance. Investors should study these reports and keep themselves informed about the performance of various schemes of different mutual funds.

Investors can compare the performance of their schemes with those of other MFs under the same category. They can also compare the performance of equity oriented schemes with the benchmarks like BSE’ sensitive index, S&P CNX Nifty, etc.
On the basis of performance of the MFs, the investors should decide when to enter or exit from a MF scheme.