Performance and rating
A platform that approves funds needs to know which share classes rewarded investors for the volatility of their returns. A raw return puts a leveraged fund first in a rising year and last in a falling year. A ranking across all funds measures the asset class more than the manager.
The question. Against the funds it competes with, how much return has this share class delivered for its risk?
Costlier classes start behind their peers. The rating ranks returns after fees inside a peer cohort, so expense ratio moves a class down the scale.
Classes in the most expensive fifth of their peers are rated 1 at 25.3%, against 14.6% in the cheapest fifth. Share classes rated 1 by net expense ratio against the peers they rank with. Source: SQX fund analytics, rating run of 19 October 2026.
The rating's volatility penalty grows with the square of volatility. Doubling a fund's volatility quadruples the return the rating subtracts, so a strategy that caps its losses keeps more of its return than a leveraged strategy. By construction, two share classes in five rate 4 or 5.
AllianzIM has the highest share of portfolios rated 4 or 5, 93.5%; Russell Investments Group the lowest, 4.7%. Fund families with 20 or more rated portfolios, 100 in all; mark area shows net assets, and a portfolio counts at the rounded mean rating of its share classes. Hover a mark for the family. Source: SQX fund analytics, rating run of 19 October 2026.
Exchange-traded classes earn more top ratings. An exchange-traded fund usually lists its portfolio as a low-cost class. A mutual fund sells its portfolio through several classes, some with sales loads and 12b-1 fees.
Exchange-traded classes are rated 5 at 25.9%, mutual fund classes at 15.2%. By cost, the share rated 5 is 16.4% in the cheapest fifth and 18.3% in the most expensive. The rating mix of rated share classes by vehicle, portfolio size and cost against peers. Source: SQX fund analytics, rating run of 19 October 2026.
| Split | Segment | Rated share classes | Rated 1, % | Rated 2, % | Rated 3, % | Rated 4, % | Rated 5, % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vehicle | Exchange-traded funds | 3,586 | 18.8 | 16.3 | 18.0 | 20.9 | 25.9 |
| Vehicle | Mutual funds | 20,417 | 21.2 | 23.3 | 21.3 | 19.1 | 15.2 |
| Portfolio size | Under $100M | 4,147 | 21.0 | 21.0 | 22.9 | 18.7 | 16.4 |
| Portfolio size | $100M to $1B | 9,397 | 22.2 | 23.1 | 18.4 | 18.4 | 18.0 |
| Portfolio size | $1B to $10B | 7,949 | 21.0 | 21.7 | 21.3 | 19.1 | 16.9 |
| Portfolio size | Over $10B | 2,512 | 14.6 | 22.7 | 24.7 | 25.1 | 12.8 |
| Cost against peers | Cheapest fifth of peers | 4,789 | 14.6 | 18.5 | 25.1 | 25.4 | 16.4 |
| Cost against peers | Second fifth | 4,789 | 18.5 | 22.8 | 22.7 | 20.3 | 15.7 |
| Cost against peers | Middle fifth | 4,789 | 22.0 | 23.4 | 19.3 | 18.4 | 16.9 |
| Cost against peers | Fourth fifth | 4,789 | 23.8 | 23.1 | 19.5 | 16.9 | 16.6 |
| Cost against peers | Most expensive fifth of peers | 4,788 | 25.3 | 23.5 | 17.4 | 15.6 | 18.3 |
A rating publishes from a year of returns. Classes with 12 to 35 months of gap-free monthly returns rank provisionally, on their 1-year record, against classes with records of similar length. Classes with 36 months or more rank on 3- and 5-year horizons. A peer cohort needs five portfolios to rank; under five, the file publishes the measure with the cohort's size in n_portfolios.
Of 33,886 share classes with a return series, 24,005 have a rating. Share classes by rating basis. Source: SQX fund analytics, rating run of 19 October 2026.
The fund analytics and fund class periods files deliver the rating and its underlying returns. The files publish on business days. The rating reruns with the files and changes as funds file new monthly returns.
- Fund analytics: an entry per share class with a return series; fund_isin identifies the class. Trailing returns from a day to five years (return_1y, return_3y, return_5y), growth of ten thousand, volatility (stdev_3y), sharpe_3y, max_drawdown_3y and investor_return_3y. The rating fields: the measure it ranks (risk_adjusted_return_3y, composite_score), the rank (composite_pct_rank), the band (rating, rating_tier), the peer group (cohort) and the basis (rating_status).
- Fund class periods: an entry per share class per period. Completed calendar years, plus trailing windows against the peer category or the benchmark index through a proxy fund, with alpha, beta, upside_capture and downside_capture. period_kind records the type.
The rating bands a certainty-equivalent return into fifths. The rating ranks a mean-variance certainty-equivalent return inside the class's peer cohort and bands the rank into fifths, with 5 the highest. Horizons of a year or more come from filed monthly total returns, and return_source records the origin. The full method appears on the SQX Fund Rating methodology page.
See it on a real fund: the risk and return of IVV, with its rating, cohort and risk-adjusted returns. Download the fund analytics sample file.