How the returns are measured

How it is done

1. 1

   Every trading day we read the reported figures for the UK-listed funds and ETFs we cover, including their 1-, 3- and 5-year NAV total return and price change.

2. 2

   Total return (NAV, income reinvested) is used first. It is what a holder actually earned, whether the fund pays its income out or keeps it.

3. 3

   Price change is only used for investment trusts and REITs, which have no NAV total return. It leaves out dividends paid out, and the share price can sit above or below the value of what the trust owns.

4. 4

   Figures are taken from the fund’s pound-quoted line where there is one. A fund quoted only in another currency (dollars, euros, Swiss francs, Mexican pesos and others) is converted to pounds at the daily reference exchange rates at the start and end of the period.

5. 5

   For funds with a long enough record we also hold up to six years of weekly closes — our own closes, preceded by the weekly price history for the same listing, which also fills any gap of more than a fortnight in our own. From those we calculate returns ourselves, all the risk measures (volatility, biggest fall, Sharpe, Sortino) and the year-by-year figures. Where a reported total return exists it takes priority for the 1-, 3- and 5-year return itself.

6. 6

   Each figure on the site is labelled "income reinvested" or "price only".

7. 7

   The price chart on a fund page shows one close a week for up to five years: our own closes and, before they begin or where they have a gap, the weekly price history for the same listing. The caption under the chart says from which date the closes are our own. Older closes (to July 2026) feed some figures but are not drawn.

Limits to know about

• Reported figures are delayed and are not audited by us. We check them (below) but cannot guarantee them.
• The reported figures run to the fund’s latest reported NAV, which can be a few days behind the latest price.
• Checks: a figure is not shown if it falls outside plausible bounds for its kind of fund (for example, a bond fund losing 87% in five years), or if total return and price change disagree by more than income could explain. Leveraged and crypto products are allowed wider bounds, because they genuinely move that far.
• Price change for ETFs is not used at all: when there is no NAV data for an ETF, its price history is too often broken by splits and relistings.
• Each reported figure is also checked against independent evidence. It is not shown if it sits far below the fund’s own price change over the same period (a total return includes the price change), far from every other fund tracking the same index, or — for a distributing share class — behind the fund’s accumulating class by more than a point or so a year. Nor is a figure for a period older than the fund (for an investment trust, older than the first week its shares traded), or one figure repeated for two periods. Where we hold our own price record we show the return from it instead, labelled price only; otherwise the period is left blank.