Mutual Fund Optimization
Run portfolio optimization across Indian open-ended equity mutual funds. The platform uses AMFI's official NAV history for daily NAVs and AMFI's NAVAll feed for SEBI category classification.
Mutual fund optimization is in beta
This feature is new and still being hardened. Coverage is limited to equity-oriented open-ended schemes. NAV history and category classification come from AMFI; results may differ from broker statements. Treat outputs as exploratory and verify before using for live decisions.
How it works
On the Optimize page, switch the Asset Class toggle from Equities to Mutual Funds. The selector lets you search the full universe of equity-oriented schemes by scheme name or AMC, paginated against the backend. You then submit between 2 and 100 schemes for optimization, exactly the same way you submit a basket of stocks.
Internally, the backend reads each scheme's daily NAV series from FolioLab's NAV store, treats the NAV as a price series, and feeds the resulting return matrix through the same optimizer pipeline used for equities. All post-optimization metrics, rolling backtests, and PDF reports work the same way as for stock baskets.
Data sources
AMFI NAV history
The primary source of daily NAVs. FolioLab keeps its own NAV store, loaded from AMFI's official NAV history download, which reaches back to 1 April 2006, and updated every night. Each nightly update reads the last ten days again, so a NAV that AMFI publishes late is still collected. A stored NAV is never overwritten, so a run made earlier can be reproduced against the NAVs it read.
MFAPI (api.mfapi.in)
Provides the master scheme directory (~37,000 open-ended schemes) behind the fund search, cached server-side for 24 hours. It is also the fallback for NAV history: a run reads a scheme from MFAPI only when the store holds fewer than 150 NAVs for it, or when its latest stored NAV is more than seven days older than the end of the run window. MFAPI republishes AMFI's NAVs, so both sources carry the same numbers.
AMFI NAVAll feed
Provides the official SEBI category for each scheme (e.g. "Equity Scheme - Large Cap Fund", "Other Scheme - Index Funds"). Used to filter out non-equity schemes before they appear in search.
Why these sources
AMFI is the industry body that publishes every scheme's official NAV, so the NAVs come from the original source rather than from a third party. AMFI's daily NAVAll text file is also the source of the SEBI categorization, which gives a defensible filter without relying on scheme-name pattern matching.
Equity-only filter
Sharpe ratio, alpha, beta, Sortino, and most other performance metrics implicitly assume an equity return distribution and an equity benchmark. To keep the analytics meaningful, only equity-oriented categories are exposed:
Included
- Large Cap Fund
- Mid Cap Fund
- Small Cap Fund
- Large & Mid Cap Fund
- Multi Cap Fund
- Flexi Cap Fund
- ELSS
- Sectoral / Thematic Fund
- Focused Fund
- Dividend Yield Fund
- Value Fund / Contra Fund
- Equity Index Fund (e.g. NIFTY 50, SENSEX, NIFTY 500)
Excluded
- Debt schemes (gilt, corporate bond, credit risk, banking & PSU, etc.)
- Liquid and overnight schemes
- Hybrid schemes (aggressive, balanced, conservative, dynamic asset allocation)
- Arbitrage funds
- Solution-oriented schemes (retirement, children's funds)
- Gold and silver ETFs / fund of funds
- Gilt index funds
Equity index funds (NIFTY 50, NIFTY Next 50, NIFTY 500, SENSEX, etc.) are included. Gilt and bond index funds are excluded even though they are categorised under "Other Scheme - Index Funds", because their return distribution is debt-like.
Limited-history caveat
Mutual fund NAV history starts no earlier than 1 April 2006, the first day of AMFI's published NAV history, and later for a scheme launched after that date. For any mutual fund run, the limited-history acknowledgement always fires:
Limited price history for this configuration
Mutual fund NAV history typically starts in the mid-2000s, and the selected benchmark may itself be shorter than NIFTY 50. The optimizer truncates the NAV series to align with the benchmark window so post-optimization metrics are computed on a consistent overlap.
A fund run can also take a custom history window, the same as a stock run. See Quick Start.
See Supported Benchmarks for inception dates per benchmark.
Plan access
403 funds_not_allowed, which the app surfaces as an upgrade prompt.Submission contract
The Optimize page submits a list of { scheme_code, label } objects to the backend instead of NSE / BSE tickers. Request validation rejects non-positive scheme codes and schemes known to be outside the AMFI equity-oriented allow-list with HTTP 400. It also rejects a close-ended or interval scheme by name with HTTP 400, because a run trades at NAV and these schemes do not redeem at NAV on every business day. A scheme code that AMFI's current scheme master does not hold, such as a closed or merged scheme, is refused with 422 UNKNOWN_FUND_SCHEME before the run is queued, so no monthly run is spent. That check does not refuse when the master cannot be read. Usable NAV history (at least 150 daily NAVs per scheme) is checked during asynchronous processing and can fail the queued job.
Minimum 2 unique schemes and maximum 100 submitted schemes per run. Duplicate scheme codes are deduplicated before optimization.
Known limitations
NAV is total-return for growth options. A growth-option NAV retains the scheme's income, so dividends are reinvested by construction. An IDCW (dividend payout) option's NAV falls on each payout, so its NAV series understates the return. Direct vs Regular plans have different NAV series; pick the plan and option you actually intend to hold.
Cut-off and pricing. NAVs are end-of-day, struck at AMC cut-off. There is no intra-day price; metrics like beta are computed at daily granularity only.
Benchmark mismatch. An NSE-listed equity benchmark is used for relative metrics. A flexi-cap or smallcap fund will mechanically exhibit higher tracking error against NIFTY 50 than against NIFTY 500 or NIFTY Smallcap 250.
Benchmark basis. A growth NAV includes reinvested dividends, and a price index does not. Select the Total Return Index basis to compare like with like; on the price basis, alpha and the information ratio read high by about the index dividend yield. See Price return or Total Return Index.
Survivorship. Wound-up schemes are not in the live MFAPI master. Backtests on currently-live schemes therefore have an upward survivorship bias.
Expense ratio is implicit in NAV. Returns are net of TER, so "alpha" here is post-fee alpha, not gross.
References
AMFI India - NAV history download and NAVAll daily file with SEBI scheme categorization: amfiindia.com
MFAPI - scheme directory and fallback NAV API for Indian mutual funds: api.mfapi.in
SEBI Circular on Categorization and Rationalization of Mutual Fund Schemes (SEBI/HO/IMD/DF3/CIR/P/2017/114).
Not investment advice. Past performance is not indicative of future results.