RupeeCase
Education . Active MF Stripped . 3 of 4
The Performance Reality
Direct beats by 0.4. Regular trails by 0.2. The TER is the whole story.
Returns CAGR in percent. Direct plan saves 0.55 in TER over Regular and that gap shows up almost exactly where you would expect it. The active management itself adds nearly nothing.
5Y CAGR view
1Y
3Y
5Y
10Y
HDFC Top 100 . Directnet of 0.95 percent TER
11.8
17.4
14.6
12.9
HDFC Top 100 . Regularnet of 1.50 percent TER
11.2
16.8
14.0
12.3
Nifty 100 TRIstated benchmark . zero fee assumption
11.4
17.0
14.2
12.7
Nifty 50 Index Fundnet of 0.20 percent TER
11.0
16.4
13.6
12.1
Risk metrics . 5Y . fund (top number) versus Nifty 100 TRI (smaller)
Beta
0.95
1.00
Std Dev
14.5
14.0
Sharpe
0.85
0.82
Max DD
-23.8
-23.4
Up / Down capture
96 / 94
100 / 100
The honest read
Direct plan beat the Nifty 100 TRI by 0.4 over 5Y . exactly the alpha you would expect from not paying the 0.55 distributor commission embedded in the Regular plan. Risk metrics sit on top of the index. The 1.5 percent fee in the Regular plan is a tax on the same exposure a 0.20 percent index fund delivers.
Tanmay Kurtkoti . Builder of RupeeCase
Source . AMFI returns . NSE indices . 5Y rolling . Apr 2026 illustrative