SIF Performance & Returns: How to Read a Short Track Record

Start with the job

Step 1 — Define the portfolio job before the peer group

A strategy designed for long-short equity, a hybrid mandate and a sector-rotation mandate can have very different opportunity sets and risk drivers. Ranking them only by trailing return answers the wrong question.

Start with the job you are considering: core growth exposure, a differentiated return driver, tactical flexibility, a change in equity sensitivity or another clearly defined role. Then identify strategies whose mandates are comparable enough for performance numbers to mean something.

For the SIF category map, use the types of SIFs in India. For the separate question “Which SIF should I choose?”, use the FinEdge selection framework.

Context for the number

Step 2 — Put return beside the correct benchmark and time period

Read the strategy’s stated benchmark and understand why it was chosen. Compare identical periods and distinguish since-inception performance from annualised figures covering longer histories.

A benchmark can provide context; it does not make two unlike strategies comparable. A few months of outperformance or underperformance should not be stretched into a conclusion about an entire market cycle.

Risk beside return

Step 3 — Ask what risk was taken to produce the return

Where sufficient and reliable history exists, useful lenses can include:

volatility of returns;
maximum drawdown and recovery experience;
downside and upside participation relative to an appropriate reference;
concentration; and
consistency across different market conditions.

Exposure beside return

Step 4 — Read performance in the context of exposure

For a long-short strategy, a return number without exposure context is incomplete. Look at the available portfolio disclosures, net and gross exposure where relevant, asset mix, concentration and material changes in positioning.

The same headline return can come from very different portfolios. How long-short SIFs work explains the mechanics; how to read a SIF ISID and Risk Band explains where to find the strategy-specific permissions and risk disclosures.

What the investor keeps

Step 5 — Include costs, liquidity and tax in the investor outcome

Published scheme performance and the investor’s actual experience are not always the same question. Applicable costs, loads, transaction timing, liquidity constraints and current tax treatment can affect the result an investor keeps.

Tax treatment is strategy- and law-dependent. Do not infer it from the word SIF or from a return table. Use the SIF rules, taxation and liquidity reference for the current rule-focused explanation and obtain qualified tax guidance where needed.

Evidence quality

Step 6 — Treat a young track record with proportionate confidence

A short live history may show how the strategy behaved in the conditions it has actually experienced. It cannot show how it behaved in market regimes that did not occur during that period.

When history is limited, put more weight on what can be examined directly: mandate, portfolio construction, risk controls, manager process, exposure, scenario disclosures, liquidity and whether the strategy’s role is coherent inside your portfolio.

One further caution about where numbers come from. Comparative SIF performance tables have begun appearing on third-party sites, assembled from published net asset values. As at 9 September 2026 we found no official AMFI or SEBI like-for-like comparative performance series for SIFs, and no regulator or industry-body analysis of how these strategies behaved through the 2026 drawdown. Short, differently dated records derived from published NAVs are not sufficient evidence for a ranking or for a conclusion about manager skill, which is why FinEdge does not publish or rely on aggregated SIF return tables. Use the strategy’s own current disclosures, and check the measurement basis before comparing anything.

The same number can describe two different markets

Between January and March 2026 Indian equity markets fell hard. On a closing basis the Nifty 50 peaked at 26,328.55 on 2 January 2026 and bottomed at 22,331.40 on 30 March 2026 — a fall of about 15%. A partial recovery followed, and the index has not regained the January level; it closed at 23,431.50 on 9 September 2026.

For most other fund categories that episode is a shared reference point. For SIFs it is not, because SIF strategies did not all exist for it. New strategies have been launching continuously since the category opened, including three in July 2026 alone.

So consider two strategies, both showing a since-inception return, both apparently comparable:

one launched before January 2026 — its entire record contains the fall and the partial recovery;
one launched in May 2026 — its record contains only the recovery.

The two records cover different market experience, so whichever number is higher, the difference cannot on its own show that one strategy is better managed. Without adjusting for what each record lived through, a higher figure proves nothing about management. Neither strategy has yet been observed across materially different market conditions for long enough to judge it, and one of them has not been observed through a fall at all.

This is the single most common way SIF numbers mislead right now, and it is invisible in a return table. Before comparing any two SIF returns, find the inception dates and ask what each record actually contains. If the answer is “different markets”, the comparison is not a comparison.

It cuts both ways. A strategy that fell in March 2026 has not been shown to be worse; it has been shown something about itself, which is more than can be said for a strategy that has never met a falling market. A record that contains a drawdown is a shorter record with more information in it.

Index levels: Nifty 50 closing values, verified 9 September 2026.

Evidence boundary

What performance can tell you—and what it cannot

Performance can help answer whether the realised outcome is consistent with the mandate and how the strategy behaved relative to a relevant reference.

Performance cannot prove that:

the same return will continue;
the highest-returning SIF is the best SIF for you;
a smoother recent period means the strategy is structurally low risk; or
an underperforming period automatically means the investment thesis has failed.

The comparison card

A seven-question comparison card

1
Are the strategies actually comparable by mandate and portfolio job?
2
Am I comparing the same dates and the relevant benchmark?
3
How much history exists, and which market conditions did it cover?
4
What drawdown, volatility and concentration accompanied the return?
5
How did net/gross exposure or asset mix influence the outcome?
6
What costs, liquidity constraints and current tax rules matter to my realised outcome?
7
Does the strategy still solve a problem my portfolio actually has?

FinEdge view

Once a strategy is already owned, the comparison becomes a review question: see how to review a SIF after investing.

Returns matter, but they need context. The objective is not to find the most impressive recent number. It is to decide whether a strategy’s realised behaviour, risks and construction are consistent with the job for which an investor would use it.

Closing

Compare the job first, the risk second and the return in context. A leaderboard is easy to build; a useful investment comparison is harder—and more valuable.

Primary next step: Which is the best SIF to invest in India?

About the author

Mayank Bhatnagar

Co-founder & COO, FinEdge

Mayank Bhatnagar is the Co-founder and COO of FinEdge. His work focuses on the processes, systems and operating discipline that help FinEdge serve investors consistently as the organisation grows.

Writes on investing discipline, investment mechanics and how structured investing processes work in practice.