How to Select Top & Best Mutual Fund?

How to select the best Mutual Fund? This is the question every investor has in mind while Investing their money. Everyone spends time doing a lot of research to get the top performing mutual fund or the best mutual fund to invest in! It is simply the most common yet most difficult question to answer in the Mutual fund Market. Simply put, selecting a best Mutual Fund or to rephrase, a top performing Mutual Fund is like selecting a right partner for any venture. Any wrong decision – on either side – can lead to catastrophic consequences.

One of the most common mistakes in selecting the best mutual fund, that even the seasoned investors do sometimes, is to solely rely on the Mutual Fund Rankings or ratings. It is not that that Mutual Fund ratings are misleading, but there is a lot of further research required. Relying on rankings must not be the sole criteria. One also needs to periodically review the investment made every three months to ensure it is monitored well. Also, if rebalancing is required than one can do this once a year unless otherwise urgently needed.

Before looking into the process of selecting the best Mutual Fund, let’s build our basics. This is an important step that many investors tend to miss out on.

Why are you Making a Mutual Fund Investment?

The first step towards any good investment is to know and understand why are you investing and what are you investing in. You should have a clear objective behind your mutual fund investment. This makes your future decisions easier.

Before investing, you should have a clear idea of your risk appetite. To know what is your risk taking capacity, you must do a Risk assessment or risk profiling. Risk assessment is important before investing as it gives you a clear picture of how much risk you can take. One can use various risk rating methodologies available on the internet or one can visit a financial advisor to do the same.

After undergoing risk profiling, one must turn their attention towards deciding the relevant Asset Allocation. You can decide the mix of assets like equity, debt and other asset classes depending on your risk taking capability. One should choose their asset allocation to match the level of risk they can take or lower than the risk they can take. This will ensure that there is no heartburn or sleepless nights later on. Your asset allocation can be either aggressive (more inclined towards investing in equity), moderate (balanced between equity & debt) or conservative (less investing in equity) depending on your risk profile.

Let’s take a look at a sample asset allocation-

After completing your risk profiling and deciding the asset allocation, selecting the right product is the most important remaining task. Below are the factors that one needs to take into consideration on How to select best mutual fund.

How to Select Best Mutual Funds?

As said earlier, selecting the best mutual fund only on the Basis of their ratings may not be sufficient. There are other factors – quantitative and qualitative – that impact the process of selecting the best mutual fund. Let’s have a look at those factors.

Mutual Fund Ratings

Mutual Fund rankings help you in selecting some of the best Mutual Funds in the business at a given point in time. CRISIL, ICRA, MorningStar, etc. are some of the rating agencies. They evaluate a Mutual Fund scheme on various parameters and give out their results. These results help you narrow down your preferences and select the best Mutual Fund.

A thing to note here is that along with the rankings, it is wise to research on the Mutual Fund schemes’ past performances as well. This will only reduce your risk and enhance your returns. Best Performing Mutual Funds like Reliance Mutual Fund, SBI Mutual Fund, UTI Mutual Fund, and many others have been giving out decent to good results in the past.

Expense Ratio

It is very important to check on entry/exit loads and expense ratios while looking for the best Mutual Fund to invest in. Many investors do not consider these recurring costs and suffer in the long run. You must check the expense ratio before investing. High expense ratios affect the schemes’ returns. Though the expense ratios are capped by SEBI, it is generally better to have low expense ratio scheme with high returns. However, always remember, the expense ratio is a relatively small portion, the returns generated or the extra returns generated by a good fund may totally supersede this. It would be penny wise and pound foolish to just select a fund on basis of expense ratio and later on miss out on returns by a good fund. Like with other factors, this needs to be viewed in conjunction with other factors such as ratings, returns etc and then will one be successful in selecting the best mutual fund.

Exit Load

Another thing to consider is the Exit Load. Different types of funds have variable exit loads depending on the nature of the investment. You might be charged with a higher percentage of exit load if you liquidate the scheme before the maturity period. This will obviously affect your Investment plan. This Factor should be taken into consideration to match the investment tenor that one has. This will ensure that there are no exit loads incurring on the investment.

Fund Age

Investing in a fund which has atleast a three-year track record or more is a good idea. This minimum timeframe gives you some data points to actually evaluate the performance of the fund. A New Fund Offer(NFO), maybe recommended and good also, however, there is no track record to the performance of the Mutual Fund scheme. While getting into new products maybe a good idea at times, this should be limited to a small portion of the Portfolio. When investing a large portion of the portfolio, a track record is a must for those products or schemes. For Equity Funds, a three-year track record is a bare minimum, for liquid and ultra-short term funds even a one-year track may suffice (however, this needs to be supplemented with many other factors).

Past Returns and Volatility

Most investors want to invest in the top performing Mutual Fund schemes in the current market scenario. While it may look like a good investment at the time, it may or may not be the best mutual fund or top performing mutual fund in the future. Have a look at the data below from 2011 to 2015 giving the top 5 performing equity funds for each year:

As you can see from the above table, apart from SBI Small & Midcap and BNP mid-cap, all the schemes are different for each year. This means the top performers of the year are not the top performers of the next year! This gives you an idea that what is best now may or may not be the best always in the future. So banking only on the returns while scouting for the best mutual funds is not always a wise move. So while investing, consider a fund that is consistent over a period and less volatile. Also, one should look at many other factors to select the best mutual fund to invest.

Now let’s look at some of the Qualitative Factors on how to select the best mutual fund.

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Reputation of the Asset Management Company

While one can look at many qualitative factors, one also needs to focus on the fund house Offering the Mutual Fund scheme. A trusted asset management company with a good track record can help you invest smartly and wisely. A good AMC has a variety of investment schemes to provide you with good options for investing. One should look at the age of the fund house, the overall AUM, the track record of management, investment process of the fund house, the number of schemes on offer across categories and also, overall the number of top performing schemes across categories. So choosing a good AMC is also an important step towards choosing the best mutual fund.

Fund Manager Track Record

The fund manager is the professional who handles your money after you invest in a scheme. So, it important to know who is handling your money. You should know their past record and should check whether their investment style suits you. One needs to look at how many years they have been managing money, their track record over the last 5 years (or more) and the number of schemes they manage. Some basic filters here will lead to getting good performing schemes.

Investment Process

Rather than relying on solely the performance of the fund manager, one should ensure that there is an investment process in place. You don't want to get into a product with key-man risk. If there is an institutionalised investment process in place, this will ensure the scheme is managed well. Even there is a fund manager change. then your investment will be protected.

Monitor & Review: Have a Disciplined Approach

If you will consider all the above factors, you might get a best Mutual Fund or top mutual fund for yourself. But to get the best out of that best Mutual Fund, you need to have a disciplined approach and monitor the investment or scheme. Markets are volatile and your investment may see its value going up & down. You must trust the research and efforts taken in selecting the Mutual Fund and avoid falling prey to short-term losses (especially in equity). Simply put, if you feel you have erred in selecting the best mutual fund, you should take action and change the fund. However, a change should not be done before giving adequate time to perform to the earlier "best mutual fund". One should do re-balancing, not before one year. Always remember, even the best of investors (even Warren Buffet) make investment mistakes, however, we should get more right decisions than wrong ones in the long run. This will ensure that our portfolio or even the best mutual funds perform over time.

Best Mutual Funds to Invest 2025 - 2026

*Below is the detailed list of Top Mutual Funds based on past 3 year CAGR returns.

As said above, selecting a best Mutual Fund is a tedious task requiring research. You have to be careful in selecting the best mutual fund scheme, one should assess all the risks and take into consideration the many factors that go into selecting the top and best mutual fund. Investing regularly reduces the risk of volatility and gives you better returns. If one invests consistently over time it will lead to good results in the future. Always remember, it's not market timing that makes money, it's the time you spend in the market!