What is NAV?

Guides that use NAV

14 guides put this term to work.

• What a mutual fund actually is (and why it is not a piggy bank)Who holds your money, who merely manages it, and why that separation is the whole safety architecture — plus what a NAV is, and what it is not.
• How do mutual funds actually make money?The three doors return arrives through — appreciation, income, realised gains — and why all of them land in the NAV, net of costs you never see billed.
• Decoding the alphabet soup: AMC, trustee, custodian and registrarThe company whose name is on the fund does not hold your money. Who does, why the structure is fragmented on purpose, and what an AMC failure would actually mean.
• What is NAV — and does a low NAV mean a cheap fund?It is a division, not a price. The arithmetic that settles the ₹12 vs ₹847 question for good, the NFO trap it creates, and which day’s NAV you actually get.
• Direct vs Regular plans: how a commission you never see costs you lakhsThe same scheme, the same portfolio, two different NAVs — and a trail commission deducted before the NAV is struck. What the gap compounds to over twenty years.
• How mutual fund investing actually works: follow the money, liveInteractive diagrams of the whole pipeline — the route one ₹10,000 SIP takes through your platform, clearing, the AMC, the RTA and the custodian, and what each is allowed to touch.
• Rupee-cost averaging: why market crashes are your best friendThe worked example where a market that went nowhere still returned 30% — and the strict condition, almost never stated, on which the whole effect depends.
• Exit load and expense ratio: the hidden costs of investingThe expense ratio split into three parts from April 2026, the caps that now apply, the charges that sit outside it — and why one percentage point can cost more than the principal.
• Growth vs IDCW: which option should you pick?An IDCW comes out of your own NAV and is taxed at your slab rate. The arithmetic, the reinvestment trap, and the rare case where it still makes sense.
• The twelve mistakes that cost first-time SIP investors the mostAlmost none of the money new investors lose goes to bad funds. It goes to plan, cost, horizon and behaviour — and every one of these is avoidable by someone who was warned.
• Gold funds and gold ETFs: paper gold versus the jewellery boxWhat gold is actually for in a portfolio, which instrument suits you — and the asymmetry where the listed ETF turns long-term at 12 months and the fund-of-fund only at 24.
• What is portfolio turnover ratio? Decoding a fund’s trading activityHow much trading it took to produce the returns, the invisible costs that come with it, and why the number is a consistency check rather than a verdict.
• Cut-off timings: which day's NAV you actually getRealisation of funds decides the NAV, not when you clicked. 3pm for most schemes, 1:30pm for liquid funds — and why optimising your SIP date is wasted effort.
• Thirty years back, thirty years ahead: how Indian funds evolvedNearly every protection you rely on exists because something failed. Which incident produced which rule, and what is likely, uncertain and unlikely next.

More on returns

What the fund made, and over what stretch of time.

Absolute return

Plain point-to-point growth over a period under a year, not annualized.

CAGR

The steady yearly rate that would have taken the start NAV to the end NAV.

YTD

Return from 1 January of the current calendar year to the latest NAV.

Rolling returns

The same holding period measured from every possible start date, not just today's.

Since inception

Annualized return over the fund's whole available NAV history.

XIRR

The annualized return of a series of cash flows on different dates.

Benchmark

The market index a fund's mandate says it is trying to beat.