How to Read a Fund Fact Sheet: The 9 Numbers That Decide Whether a Fund Is Worth Buying

A fund fact sheet is a disclosure document. It exists because the fund is required to tell you what it holds, what it costs and how it has behaved, and it is the shortest route from marketing language to audited numbers. The difficulty is not access. It is knowing which fields carry decision weight, and whether the copy in front of you is the current one.

The documents you are entitled to, and how often they arrive

MoneySense states the entitlement plainly: when a fund is offered to you, it must be accompanied by a prospectus and a Product Highlights Sheet (PHS). Investors are told to ask for these documents and read them carefully to understand the fund's investment objective, strategy, risks, fees, historical performance and other important information. Monitoring after purchase runs on a separate track: read the fund manager's fund reports and factsheets to monitor how your fund is performing.

The publication calendar is what tells you whether your copy is stale. Annual reports, annual accounts and the auditor's report come within three months of the fund's financial year-end. Semi-annual accounts and semi-annual reports come within two months of the fund's financial half-year end. Some fund managers also publish monthly or quarterly updates, or factsheets on their funds, and these materials are likewise for monitoring performance.

The checklist below follows the items MoneySense lists for reading fund documents and reports. Every figure quoted from a live product page is a page value captured in October 2026 and will move.

1. Total expense ratio

Recurring fees are paid by the fund and include management fees, trustee fees and other fees. These costs are passed on to you. The fees charged to the fund make up the Total Expense Ratio (TER), which MoneySense puts at usually between 1.0% and 2.5% of the fund's NAV, and which should be disclosed in the fund's factsheet. The instruction attached to it is comparative: assess a fund's TER before deciding whether to invest in it, and use the TER to compare the costs incurred by different funds with the same investment objectives or approach, and the same fund through different channels.

For exchange-traded funds the framing tightens. The TER is the annual cost of the fund, expressed as a percentage of assets under management and deducted directly from the fund's assets; it covers the fund manager's fee and other fund-level expenses. For similar ETFs tracking the same index, the TER can range from as low as 0.03% to over 0.5% of the NAV of the ETF per annum.

On a live Singapore page, the Amova Singapore STI ETF (SGD Acc Class) shows a Total Expense Ratio of 0.24% p.a., audited as of the financial period ended 30 June 2025, a Management Fee of 0.09% p.a. and a Trustee Fee of up to 0.045% p.a., as of October 2026. The ABF Singapore Bond Index Fund page, captured the same month, shows a Total Expense Ratio of 0.24% p.a. and a Trustee Fee of up to 0.045% p.a. The field structure is identical; the values are not guaranteed to be.

MoneySense also warns that the TER is the starting point for comparison, but it is not the only cost that matters. Bid-ask spreads, brokerage commissions, and withholding taxes also affect your net return.

2. Benchmark

Check if the fund is managed in reference to a benchmark. If it is, compare the fund's performance relative to other funds with the same or similar benchmarks. A benchmark is the reference series, and its name specifies exactly what is being measured.

The Amova STI ETF page states its benchmark as Straits Times Index, in total return. The ABF Singapore Bond Index Fund states its benchmark as iBoxx ABF Singapore Index calculated on a total return basis. Two funds, two index providers, two asset classes — and the index name is what makes the performance comparison valid or invalid.

3. Tracking error

Tracking error measures how closely a fund tracks a benchmark by comparing the performance of the fund to that of the benchmark. MoneySense gives the reading rule directly: a low tracking error means that a passive fund's returns closely followed that of the benchmark. For an index fund, the number is the distance between what you were promised and what you received.

4. Active share

Active share measures how much a fund's holdings differ from the benchmark's holdings at a point in time. In general, a fund that has no holdings in common with the benchmark will have an active share of 100%, while a fund that has exactly the same holdings as the benchmark will have an active share of 0%. It is a snapshot, not an average over time, and it says nothing about whether the difference was profitable.

5. Latest fund size

MoneySense's reason for watching this field is cost: funds with larger asset base are likely to have a lower TER or costs per unit invested. Size is therefore not a quality score but a cost-density signal.

The published values vary widely across products. The Amova STI ETF page reports Total Fund Size of SGD 52.03M as of 02 Oct 2026, against a NAV of SGD 5.3945 as of 02 Oct 2026. The ABF Singapore Bond Index Fund reports Total Fund Size of SGD 1137.71M as of 02 Oct 2026, against a NAV of SGD 1.1002 as of 02 Oct 2026.

6. Changes in the top 10 holdings

Changes in the top 10 holdings of the fund, as shown in the fund's periodic reports, could indicate that the investment approach or strategy has changed. MoneySense's follow-up is the useful part: if you notice that the fund's holdings do not correspond with its stated investment objective, find out why. That gap between stated objective and actual holdings is a documentation problem before it is a performance problem.

7. Volatility

Volatility is a measure of fluctuation of a fund's value over a time period. Higher volatility implies higher risk. The field is meaningless without its window — a volatility figure always belongs to a stated period, and the period should be printed alongside it.

8. Sharpe ratio

The Sharpe ratio is an indicator of the risk-adjusted performance of a fund. The higher the ratio, the better the fund's returns relative to the amount of risk taken. It is the only item on this list that combines return and risk into a single number, which is also why it should be read against volatility rather than on its own.

9. One-off charges: subscription, redemption and platform fee

These sit outside the TER and are charged at the point of transaction or on the platform.

The subscription fee, or initial sales charge, also known as the front-end load, is payable to the distributor when you buy a fund, and ranges from 1.5% to 5% of your investment. The redemption fee, or realisation charge, also known as the back-end load, is payable to the distributor whenever you sell or redeem the fund, and ranges from 1% to 5% of your investment. The two rarely coexist: distributors that levy initial sales charges do not usually charge redemption fees, and distributors that charge redemption fees do not usually levy initial sales charges.

Platform fees are a separate layer, incurred if you buy funds through a fund platform or through a financial adviser who uses a fund platform, ranging from 0 to 0.3% per annum of the total value of fund holdings held with the fund platform. The deduction mechanic matters. Platform fees will be deducted from the cash holdings placed with the fund platform. If you do not have cash holdings placed with the fund platform, some of your fund holdings — typically the best-performing ones — would be sold off to pay the platform fees.

The TER cap is a contractual commitment

A published TER is a historical figure. A cap is not. The Amova STI ETF page carries this clause: the Manager has reduced the cap on the total expense ratio of the Fund to 0.25% per annum of the Deposited Property with effect from 1 December 2023, and any fees and expenses that are payable by the Fund and are in excess of 0.25% per annum of the Deposited Property will be borne by the Manager and not the Fund.

That is the difference between an outcome and an obligation. The audited TER tells you what the fund cost in a finished period; the cap tells you who absorbs the excess if costs run higher. The same page shows why the version of the document matters: the management fee has been reduced from 0.20% p.a. to 0.09% with effect from 01 October 2025. A fact sheet printed before that date and one printed after it describe different funds, economically.

Supplementary checks: inception date, listing date and one-year high/low

Inception date tells you when the fund was launched. It sets the length of the record you are reading and therefore how much weight any long-period return can carry. On the Amova STI ETF page, the corresponding launch-timing field is a Listing Date of 24 February 2009, and the page also records a Fund Structure of open-ended listed unit trust traded on Singapore Exchange, a Valuation Frequency of daily, and a Dividend Distribution Frequency of NIL. The ABF Singapore Bond Index Fund page instead records a Dividend Distribution Frequency of semi-annually at discretion of Manager.

Price information, given as the 1-year high and 1-year low, shows the highest and lowest unit prices in the past one year. MoneySense frames its use narrowly: it provides an overview of price fluctuations of the fund but should not be used alone to assess how risky a fund is.

What the official pages say about performance

MoneySense's position on performance is two-sided. While a fund's past performance is not indicative of its future performance, it is still useful for you to compare the fund's performance to its benchmark and other funds with similar investment objectives. On return specifically: past returns do not guarantee future performance, and your returns would depend on the fund's actual performance.

The product pages carry the corresponding risk language. The value of units and income from them may fall or rise. Past performance or any prediction, projection or forecast is not indicative of future performance.

Working with the nine numbers

The method is sequential rather than cumulative. Establish that the document is current by checking it against the reporting calendar — three months from financial year-end for annual accounts, two months from the half-year end for semi-annual accounts. Read the benchmark first, because every return figure afterwards is measured against it. Then separate recurring cost from transactional cost: the TER and its cap on one side, subscription, redemption and platform fees on the other, since they are deducted at different points and by different parties. Tracking error and active share answer whether the fund delivered the exposure it described. Fund size, changes in the top 10 holdings, volatility and the Sharpe ratio describe how it did so. Inception date and the one-year high/low set the boundaries of the record.

Every one of those values is dated. A fact sheet is a snapshot of a fund on a specific day, and the numbers are useful precisely to the extent that the reader treats them that way — as comparable, sourced and time-stamped, rather than as fixed properties of the fund.