The way investors fall over each other to lap up NFOs (New Fund Offers) of mutual funds, it is very obvious that the meaning of NAV of mutual funds remains misunderstood.
How is the net asset value NAV of a mutual fund unit calculated is very important to know so that you can understand the dynamics of mutual fund investing – after all it is your hard earned money and could throw your entire financial planning in disarray.
Let us see with an example how NAV if calculated.
What is NAV ?
NAV is nothing but the total market value of all the assets held in the mutual fund portfolio less the liabilities, divided by all the outstanding units. That amounts to nothing but the “book value”.
The NAV measures how much each share of a mutual fund is worth. So essentially, the NAV of a mutual fund is the cost of one share of the fund.
How is it calculated ?
The total assets of a mutual fund usually falls into two categories – cash and securities. Securities include stocks and bonds. So the total asset will include the market value of all it’s cash, stocks, bonds. Liquid assets, dividends to be received, interest accrued also need to be included in the total assets.
At the same time, the mutual fund will have some money that it will owe to some creditors. That is it’s liabilities. There will be some expenses that has accrued over time and yet to be paid, this also needs to be included.
Let us see that in a formula.
Net Asset Value (NAV) = (Assets – Debts) / (Number of Outstanding units)
where
Assets = Market value of the fund’s investments + Receivables + Accrued Income
Debts = Liabilities + Accrued Expenses
The market value of stocks and debentures is taken as the closing price on the major stock exchange where it is listed.
Example
As an example, assume there are two investors X and Y who have invested in a mutual fund which decided to issue out units at Rs 1/-.
X invests Rs 100/- and Y invests Rs 200/-.
The total corpus of the mutual fund will be Rs 100 + Rs 200 = Rs 300/- and X will get 100 units and Y will get 200 units.
Now suppose the mutual fund manager invests smartly over a year and makes the investment grow and the corpus becomes Rs 800/-.
The NAV will be calculated as :
NAV per share = (Assets – Debts) / ( Number of Outstanding Units)
= (Rs 800/- 0) / (300)
= 2.67
The NAV is 2.67.
So X’s value of investments will be 100 units * 2.67 = Rs 267/- and
Y’s value of investments will be 200 units * 2.67 = Rs 534/-.
In reality of course, there are liabilities and expense ratios to be taken care of, this is an example just for simplicity.
Other points to note
The NAV of a fund is calculated by the mutual fund house itself and in some cases by some accounting firms that the mutual fund might hire for this purpose.
Usually, the calculation of a NAV is impossible during market hours as the price of the underlying holdings (say stocks) keeps changing. Though the NAV can be calculated, it would change the next minute or second. Given this, NAVs are usually declared after market closing hours once a day.
As per the regulator SEBI’s guidelines, all mutual funds are required to publish the NAV of their schemes at least once a week and in two leading newspapers.
Note that the NAV is arrived at after deduction of the Expense Ratio of a mutual fund. The expense ratio is the total amount of annual expenses incurred by a mutual fund and it includes the management fee and operating expenses like the registrar and transfer agent fee, marketing and distribution fee, audit fee and custodian fee.
Did this article help you in any way – if yes, please leave a comment ?
Thanks for this. I did not know about the formula at all. And the expense ratio as well. Please do an article on expense ratio in the future.
@Jigar, Ok I will try and do something on expense ratios in the future.
Radhey,
Nice article, very well explained.
Hope you have fully recovered by now.
Rakesh
@Rakesh, Appreciate your asking Rakesh. I have nearly fully recovered now. I will do my best to churn out the articles for everyone.
Hey Radhey, Good to here about your recovery.
You know because of this kind of articles only, one would like to come back this website again and again instead of following many sites and magazines all the time.
Thanks for this one.
For me the important take was the below line.
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‘Note that the NAV of a mutual fund is calculated after deduction of the Expense Ratio of a mutual fund.’
Never knew this, had some wrong idea about expense ratio
@Chirag, Thank you Chirag. Appreciate your feedback.
Great insight, I had no clue of all this. Thanks Radhey.
Would it be possible for you to publish calculation of a real MF for better understanding of other components [that were not part of the given example] involved in calculating the NAV?
@Vivek K, I will try. The list of what I need to write on is piling up think and fast.
This article is well explained and i got to know more on the topic.thank u ….
@sumana, Glad you liked it.
fantastic explanation
I don’t know about mutual funds, basics, explain me about this.
@Satyavathi,
You are at the right place. Do take time to read various articles here and you will gain knowledge. For start read the below articles on mutual funds-
http://www.thewealthwisher.com/2010/07/15/what-is-a-mutual-fund/
http://www.thewealthwisher.com/2010/07/18/advantages-of-mutual-funds/
It was really helpful……..Thanks a lot……for posting such articles…..better idea on NAV calculation
Glad you liked it.
sir i have invested 20,000 rs in jm financial..I dont know much about nav… I want to knoe the reuturn of my investment if nav is 12.55…
@Ajay,
Refer to your MF statement, In that you will have the purchase price, no. of units information. Based on that you can find out the returns.
sir, If a unit of mutual fund’s market price is 128 & its nav is 121 then what is the safe investment price of that mutual fund?? plz. explain with the calculation…thanks
Swapan, did not quite understand your question.
What did you mean by “mutual fund’s market price is 128″ ?
@Swapan,
Market price is for a particular stock, NAV is for a MF. Did you mean cost price?
yes this help me lot , however there one ? Like on what ground initial unit price decided
@Sanjay,
I guess the unit price is the base price and fixed at Rs. 10.
Never came across a fund which quoted less than Rs.10 during IPO.
Simple and clear explanation. Thanks a ton.
Glad you liked it, please share with others.
Really a very nice n informative article ! Thanks!
Thanks Rajesh, keep coming back for more.
The information provided above is very useful and too descriptive. It’been a great job. Thanks for posting this information.
Nice & simple explanation:-)
Thank you
yes, it gives a clear understanding about NAV…..thnk u
thankyou very helpful and useful