A mutual fund publishes its net asset value every business day, but it is required to disclose its full list of holdings only once a month, within a few days of the month-end. So the holdings you see are usually a snapshot from the last month-end, not from today. The daily NAV moves with live prices, while the portfolio behind it is revealed on a regulatory schedule.
Key takeaways
- SEBI requires mutual funds in India to disclose their complete portfolio monthly, typically within ten days of each month-end.
- The daily NAV is calculated from live closing prices every business day, so it is current even when the holdings list is not.
- The holdings you read are a month-end snapshot, so a fund may have already bought or sold positions you cannot yet see.
- The lag is a disclosure rule, not a data error, and it exists partly to limit copycat trading and front-running of large fund orders.
What does a mutual fund actually publish, and how often?
A Mutual Fund publishes two very different kinds of information on two very different schedules. Its NAV, the per-unit value of the fund, is calculated and published every business day after markets close, using that day's closing prices for every security the fund holds. This is why you can track a fund's value daily.
The full list of what the fund owns, its portfolio disclosure, is published far less often. Under SEBI rules, Indian mutual funds must disclose their complete holdings every month, generally within ten days of the month-end, and a more detailed half-yearly statement twice a year. So the number you see daily is fresh, but the underlying list of holdings you read is a periodic snapshot.
Why is the holdings list delayed when the NAV is not?
The NAV can be current because computing it does not reveal what the fund is doing. It only requires the prices of securities the fund already holds, applied to quantities the fund knows internally. Publishing a single value each day gives away nothing about the fund's strategy.
Publishing the full holdings list is different. It reveals exactly what a large, well-resourced fund is buying and selling. If that were broadcast in real time, other participants could trade ahead of the fund's remaining orders, a practice regulators try to limit. The monthly disclosure window is a deliberate balance between transparency for investors and protecting the fund (and therefore its investors) from being front-run.
Open the mutual funds section on Artha Terminal to see daily NAV alongside holdings marked with the date they were disclosed.
How large can the gap between snapshot and reality be?
Because the portfolio is disclosed as a month-end snapshot released a few days later, the holdings you read can be up to five or six weeks old by the time you act on them. An actively managed fund may have already added new positions, trimmed winners, or exited a name entirely since that snapshot was taken.
The gap matters more for high-turnover strategies than for steady ones. An Index Fund that simply tracks a benchmark changes little between disclosures, so its month-old list is close to its current one. A concentrated, actively traded fund can look materially different from its last published portfolio. Reading the disclosure date alongside the holdings, rather than assuming the list is live, is the discipline that avoids being misled.
What can you rely on between disclosures?
Between portfolio disclosures, the reliable, current figures are the daily NAV, the fund's stated mandate, its AUM, and its expense ratio, none of which depend on knowing each individual holding. These tell you how the fund is priced, how large it is, and what it is allowed to invest in.
What you cannot assume is that the last published holdings are today's holdings. If a fund's category or mandate has shifted, or if a manager change has occurred, the next disclosure may look quite different from the last. Treat the holdings list as a historical document with a date attached, and weigh how much the fund's style is likely to have moved it since.
How does Artha Terminal handle the disclosure lag?
On Artha Terminal, the mutual funds section shows the daily NAV and fund-level figures as current data, while presenting portfolio holdings with the disclosure date they came from, so you are never left assuming a month-old snapshot is live. This separation makes the lag explicit rather than hidden.
If you want to reason about what a delayed holdings list does and does not tell you, Ask Warren, the built-in assistant, can explain the disclosure schedule for a given fund and point you to the figures that are genuinely up to date. Pairing that with Researching funds past the rating helps you judge a fund on evidence that is current rather than stale.