What Is King Score? The 0 to 100 Fund Quality Rating, Explained

King Score is a 0 to 100 rating of a mutual fund's long-term quality, measured against its own category. A score of 80 means that, blending returns, consistency, drawdowns and risk-adjusted performance, the fund has outscored roughly 80% of its true peers. That is the whole idea. The rest of this guide explains how it is built, how to read it, and the mistakes to avoid.

The problem King Score solves

Open any fund ranking and you will usually see funds sorted by return. That sounds sensible and is quietly dangerous, because a return-only ranking rewards risk-taking, not skill.

Here is the trap with a simple example. Fund A compounds 18% a year, steadily, with a worst-ever fall of 25%. Fund B compounds 21%, but got there through one spectacular year, two poor ones, and a 60% collapse along the way. A returns table puts Fund B on top. Yet most real investors in Fund B never earned its published return - they bought after the spectacular year and sold somewhere inside the 60% fall.

The published return assumes you invested on day one, never added money, never panicked, and never left. Real investors do none of those things through a 60% drawdown. A quality score has to care about the journey, because the journey decides whether you actually stay for the destination.

First, understand one word: percentile

King Score is built from percentiles, so let us make that word idiot-proof.

Picture 100 students taking the same exam. If your marks beat 90 of them, you are in the 90th percentile. Notice what the percentile does not depend on: how hard the exam was. Everyone sat the same paper, so the rank is fair.

Funds sit different exams. A small-cap fund and a banking fund and a bond fund face completely different markets, so comparing their raw numbers is meaningless. That is why every ingredient of King Score ranks a fund only within its own sub-category: Small Cap against Small Cap, Flexi Cap against Flexi Cap. A King Score of 85 always means "top 15% of its own kind", whatever that kind is.

The four ingredients, and the exact weights

The formula, exactly as our code computes it:

King Score = 0.35 x (return percentile) + 0.25 x (consistency percentile) + 0.20 x (drawdown percentile) + 0.20 x (Sharpe percentile)

A worked example. Suppose a fund ranks, within its category: 90th percentile on 3-year returns, 80th on consistency, 60th on drawdown, 70th on Sharpe.

0.35 x 90 = 31.5
0.25 x 80 = 20.0
0.20 x 60 = 12.0
0.20 x 70 = 14.0
King Score = 77.5, shown as 78

Notice the design choice: returns carry the biggest single weight (35%), because returns are what you keep. But the other 65% is entirely about how the returns arrived. A fund cannot score in the 90s by being a one-year wonder; it has to have delivered regularly, fallen less than peers in the bad stretches, and compensated its investors for the swings.

How to read the number

Three reading rules that prevent most mistakes:

1. Only compare King Scores within a category. An 80 small-cap fund is not "better" than a 70 liquid fund; they sat different exams. To compare across a category, use the sortable tables in our category directories.
2. A high score is a description of the past, not a forecast. It says the record has been good. Records fade, managers change, styles go out of favour.
3. King Score is slow on purpose. It leans on 3-year and full-history numbers, so it barely moves week to week. If you want to know what is heating up right now, that is the job of the RS Rating, not King.

A tale of two funds

Numbers make the design visible. Consider two real-shaped small cap funds:

Fund X: 3-year CAGR 26% (95th percentile), but its gains came in one explosive year. Rolling 1-year windows positive only 62% of the time (40th percentile), worst-ever fall of 61% (25th percentile), Sharpe mid-pack (50th percentile). King Score: 0.35(95) + 0.25(40) + 0.20(25) + 0.20(50) = 58.

Fund Y: 3-year CAGR 21% (75th percentile) - visibly behind X on the returns table. But 91% of its rolling windows were positive (90th percentile), its worst fall was 34% (85th percentile), and its Sharpe ranks 80th percentile. King Score: 0.35(75) + 0.25(90) + 0.20(85) + 0.20(80) = 82.

Every returns-sorted table on the internet puts X above Y. King puts Y a full 24 points ahead - because Y's investors could realistically have captured Y's returns, while X's investors had to survive a 61% collapse and years of feast-or-famine to capture X's. The score is not measuring which fund's chart looks best; it is measuring which record an actual human could have lived through.

What a high King Score means in different categories

The construction is identical everywhere - percentiles within the sub-category - but what it rewards shifts with the terrain:

• In small and mid cap funds, the drawdown and consistency legs do heavy lifting: the category's dispersion is huge, and King favours the funds that captured the upside without the deepest craters.
• In large cap and index-heavy categories, returns cluster tightly, so small edges in cost and consistency move the rankings - a King-85 large cap fund is usually a story of relentless small wins.
• In debt categories, returns are compressed and the score largely separates the disciplined from the yield-chasers - a credit event shows up as a drawdown scar that haunts a debt fund's King for years, by design.
• In hybrid and balanced advantage funds, King effectively grades the promise the category makes: decent returns with contained falls. Funds that deliver equity-like returns while breaking that promise rank lower than their returns suggest.

Same formula, honest in each dialect. The one rule that never changes: compare King only within a category.

King Score vs star ratings

The obvious question: how is this different from the star ratings everywhere else? Three ways that matter.

The formula is public. Most star ratings are proprietary blends you cannot audit. King's exact weights and inputs are on this page and in the methodology; you can recompute any fund's score yourself from its page.

Nothing is pay-to-play. No AMC pays us, no fund can improve its score by any means other than performing, and we sell no funds. The incentive structure of ratings businesses matters more than their mathematics.

It is honest about what it is. A compressed summary of the past, within a category - not a forecast, not advice, not a seal of approval. Star ratings drift into being read as endorsements; we would rather the number stay a measurement.

A practical workflow that uses King well

1. Start at a category ranking or directory sorted by King - this is your shortlist generator, not your decision.
2. Open the top few funds' pages and read the percentile breakdown - two funds with King 80 can get there very differently (one on returns, one on resilience), and which shape suits you is a personal question.
3. Check the worst fall in rupees and the crash-behaviour section - the score weights drawdown at 20%, but your stomach weights it differently.
4. Check portfolio overlap if you already own funds in the category - a second fund with 45% overlap adds fees, not diversification.
5. Then look at RS for current form, and read the fund's full page before any decision.

King Score vs RS Rating: use them together

The two ratings deliberately measure different clocks:

A fund's page shows both, side by side, precisely so you can place it in this grid yourself.

Where the ingredients come from

All four ingredients are computed from public data: AMFI daily NAV history (up to 20 years), with consistency measured as the share of rolling 1-year windows (stepped monthly over the last five years) that ended positive, drawdown measured across the entire NAV history, and Sharpe measured over three years. Every fund page shows the underlying numbers, so you can always see why a fund scores what it scores: the full methodology is public.

What King Score cannot tell you

Honesty section. King Score does not know:

• Whether the fund fits you. A 90-score sectoral fund is still a concentrated bet that can fall 40%. Category first, score second.
• Whether the future resembles the past. No formula does.
• Anything about very young funds. A fund without three years of history has no 3-year percentile to rank; scores appear once the record exists.
• Whether you should buy anything. MF Terminal is descriptive research, not investment advice. We are not a SEBI-registered adviser, and no score here is a recommendation.

FAQ

Why did a fund's King Score change? Either its own record moved (a new drawdown, better rolling consistency) or its peers moved around it. Percentiles are relative; a fund can stand still and slip because the category improved.

Can a fund score 100? It would need to be at the very top of its category on all four ingredients simultaneously. Scores in the high 90s are rare and usually short-lived.

Is a King Score of 80+ a buy signal? No. It is a compressed description of a strong past record within one category. What you do with that information depends on your goals, horizon and risk tolerance, which no score can know.

Where do I see King Scores? On every fund page (with its percentile breakdown), in the sortable category directories, and across the free terminal where you can screen and sort the whole universe by it.