What beta tells you
Beta gauges a fund's sensitivity to its benchmark. If the benchmark rises 10% and a fund has a beta of 1.2, you'd roughly expect the fund to rise about 12% — and fall harder when the market drops. A beta of 0.8 suggests a smoother ride that captures less of both directions.
How to read it
- Beta = 1: moves with the index.
- Beta > 1: more aggressive, bigger swings.
- Beta < 1: more defensive.
- Beta says nothing about whether returns were good — only how the fund moved with the market. Pair it with alpha and volatility.
Beta is most meaningful for equity funds measured against a relevant index (e.g. a small-cap fund vs a small-cap benchmark). Comparing against the wrong index makes beta misleading.
How FindMF computes it
Using AMFI NAVs, we resample fund and benchmark to month-end returns and require 24+ overlapping months. Beta is the covariance of fund and benchmark returns divided by the benchmark's variance. Full details on methodology.