Where every number on WealthTicker comes from

Why read the methodology at all?

Two sites can show different 3-year returns for the same fund and both be right, because they made different choices: which NAV, which dates, annualised or not. The methodology page writes down every choice this site makes, and the glossary explains what each resulting number means. Between them they answer "where did this figure come from?" for anything on a fund page. This post tours both, then checks two published figures against the formulas, using NAVs to 15 October 2026.

Step 1: where the data comes from

The methodology's first section names the sources:

• Scheme list and daily NAVs: AMFI, via its NAVAll.txt file, with history through mfapi.in, which mirrors AMFI's archive.
• Quarterly average AUM and expense ratios: AMFI's scheme-level disclosures.
• Holdings, fund managers and scheme details: the fund houses' own published disclosures.

NAVs are picked up within minutes of AMFI publishing them; slower data refreshes hourly. One rule here matters more than it looks: no trailing figure is computed against a NAV more than 15 days old, so a scheme that stops pricing shows blanks rather than a stale number.

Step 2: how the NAV series is cleaned

Before anything is computed, each NAV series goes through three filters. Invalid points are dropped. A one-day spike of more than 25% that reverts to within 8% the next session is treated as a bad print and removed. And a jump of more than 3× in a day is either matched to a unit split the fund house actually filed, and rescaled, or treated as a break, with history before it discarded. Side-pocketed schemes are kept out of screens and rankings entirely.

Step 3: returns and risk

The rules a fund page follows:

• Under one year, returns are absolute; from one year up, CAGR. Annualising a 6-month return would inflate it.
• Returns are net of the expense ratio but not of exit load, stamp duty or tax.
• Volatility is the standard deviation of daily returns over the trailing three years, annualised by √252.
• Sharpe is trailing 3-year CAGR minus 6.5%, divided by that volatility, and is blank under three years of history. Sortino uses downside deviation only.
• Maximum drawdown is shown over the whole history and over a trailing three years; comparisons use the 3-year version, because a lifetime drawdown also measures a fund's age.

On a fund page, Std deviation, Sharpe, Sortino and the all-time max drawdown sit in the advanced metrics block, which needs a free account to see.

Worked example: check two mid-cap funds yourself

Take two Direct Growth mid-cap funds as of 15 October 2026:

The Sharpe ratios reproduce exactly. The star ratings look backwards at first: Invesco returned almost six points a year more, yet HDFC has five stars and Invesco four. The star rating formula explains it. Each fund is scored on four percentiles within its peer group, here 29 mid-cap Direct Growth plans:

The weighted score is then ranked within the same 29 funds. HDFC's lands at the 93rd percentile, inside the 5-star band (90 and above); Invesco's at the 87th, inside the 4-star band (67.5 to 90). Invesco wins on return; HDFC wins on how much it swung and how far it fell. The fund pages show the stars, not these component scores, which come from the rating table behind them.

That is the point of reading the methodology: a 4-star fund with the higher return is not an error, it is the formula weighing risk at 30% combined. Whether you agree with that weighting is up to you. What five-star ratings show looks at how the stars have held up.

Step 4: use the glossary for the words

The glossary covers 52 terms in nine groups: Returns, Risk, Benchmark-relative, Portfolio, Costs & scheme terms, Tax, Ratings & classification, Ways of investing and The filings. A jump bar at the top goes to each group. Every term has its own page, headed "What is …?", with a longer explanation and links to the guides that use it. The Sharpe ratio entry, for example, works through a fund returning 18% with 12% volatility, which scores (18 − 6.5) ÷ 12 ≈ 0.96, and lists three things the ratio does not tell you.

For a longer treatment of the same ideas, the risk-adjusted returns guide and absolute return, CAGR and XIRR go further than a glossary entry can.

What the methodology does not claim

The methodology page's last section, "What we don't do", is worth reading first. The site is not a distributor and earns no commission, it is not a SEBI-registered investment adviser, and it does not forecast. Every figure is computed from third-party data and can contain errors, so check a scheme's own documents before acting; how to read a mutual fund factsheet is a guide to those. When two funds' figures disagree, comparing two funds side by side suggests which rows to trust first. A rating is an ordering by a stated formula, not advice.