Peer percentile
A fund's exact position in its category as a continuous 0–100 score — 95th percentile means the fund outperformed 95% of peers.
Peer percentile is the continuous, granular version of quartile rank. Instead of bucketing a fund into one of four groups, it assigns a precise score from 0 to 100 showing exactly where the fund sits within its category. The 90th percentile means the fund outperformed 90% of its peers over the window.
What it measures
Peer percentile is calculated for the same return windows as quartile rank (1Y, 3Y, 5Y) and expresses relative standing on a continuous scale. It is more sensitive to movement within a quartile — two funds both in Q1 might have peer percentiles of 72 and 98, a material difference masked by the coarser quartile label.
How it is computed
peer_percentile = (1 − (rank − 1) / (N − 1)) × 100
Where:
rank= the fund's rank in the category (1 = best)N= total number of funds in the category for the window
This formula gives rank 1 a percentile of 100, rank N a percentile of 0 (or approximately 0), and interpolates linearly between.
Example: In a category of 38 mid-cap funds, a fund ranks 4th by 3-year return.
Percentile = (1 − (4−1)/(38−1)) × 100 = (1 − 3/37) × 100 = (1 − 0.081) × 100 = 91.9
This fund is at the ~92nd percentile — top 8% of peers — a finer signal than simply "Q1."
How to interpret
| Percentile | Standing |
|---|---|
| 90–100 | Exceptional — top 10% of category |
| 75–90 | Strong — Q1 range |
| 50–75 | Above median — Q2 range |
| 25–50 | Below median — Q3 range |
| 0–25 | Bottom quartile — Q4 |
For multi-period consistency checks, MintByte shows percentile across 1Y, 3Y, and 5Y side by side. A fund at 85th percentile on 3Y but 30th percentile on 1Y has had a recent deterioration worth investigating.
Limitations + caveats
Peer percentile inherits all the limitations of category membership: SEBI category changes, benchmark mismatches at the margin, and survivorship bias (only live funds appear in the ranking; wound-up underperformers are excluded). Categories with fewer than 10 funds produce less reliable percentile spreads. For absolute return targets (e.g. "I need 12% for my goal"), percentile is less informative than rolling returns which show the raw return distribution.
Related metrics
- Quartile Rank — coarser four-bucket version of the same concept.
- Rolling Returns — absolute return distribution; percentile is peer-relative, rolling returns are absolute.
- Alpha — excess return after market exposure adjustment; peer percentile is market-adjusted implicitly only if all peers have similar market exposure.
Sources
Category return data: AdvisorKhoj API. Category membership: SEBI classification, validated monthly. Percentile recomputed monthly; point-in-time snapshots stored for trend tracking.