How long should you hold a mutual fund? What the windows show
The same funds look different over one year and over five. Comparing the two windows side by side is the cheapest lesson in why holding period matters.
These figures update themselves. Every number below is recalculated from NAV history each day, so this page is current as of 27 August 2026 rather than the day it was written.
Every fund prospectus in Bangladesh says something about a long-term horizon. Almost none of them show you what the difference between horizons actually looks like.
The two windows on this site do exactly that, using the same funds and the same method.
The short window
Over 2 years, all 34 tracked funds can be ranked together, and the leader is VIPB Fixed Income Fund at 20.02% a year. The weakest returned 0.59%.
The long window
Over 5 years, only 25 funds have enough history to appear. The leader there is CWT Emerging Bangladesh First Growth Fund at 9.06%.
Notice what happened to the numbers. The best figure over the longer window is lower than the best over the shorter one. That is the usual pattern and it is not a sign that funds got worse.
A short window can sit entirely inside a good stretch. A longer window almost always contains a bad one as well, and averaging a bad stretch in pulls the annual figure down. The longer number is less flattering and more representative.
The overlap is the useful part
Only 3 of the 34 funds appear in the upper group on both windows: Ekush First Unit Fund, EDGE Bangladesh Mutual Fund, EDGE AMC Growth Fund.
That is the closest thing to a consistency signal available here, and it is deliberately a weak one. A fund can lead a short window by catching a favourable few months. Leading across both windows means it held up through more than one kind of market, which is harder to do by luck.
It is still not a forecast. It is a filter that removes funds whose record rests on a single good run.
What a holding period actually decides
Two practical things, both visible in the figures on this site.
Whether you are forced to sell at a bad moment. A fund's NAV on any given day is whatever the portfolio is worth that day, and over a few months it can sit below what you paid. Across the 34 tracked funds the weakest 2 years result was 0.59% a year, so a short hold in the wrong fund was genuinely capable of going nowhere.
Whether dividends have time to compound. Reinvested payouts buy units that then earn payouts of their own. Over 2 years that effect is small, which is why the reinvested and cash-taken figures sit close together on short windows. Over the 5 years window the two diverge substantially, and the gap is entirely compounding.
The honest limit
A longer hold does not guarantee a better result. A poorly run fund stays poorly run, and time does not repair it: the weakest funds over 5 years are not rescued by the extra years.
What the longer window buys is a more reliable read on which fund is which. Of 34 funds, only 3 held an upper position on both windows, and that filter is only visible because the longer history exists. Figures through 27 August 2026.
Common questions
Is there a minimum sensible holding period?
This site does not give personal advice. What the data shows is that the shortest windows are the most sensitive to the particular months they cover, and that dividends need years rather than months to compound meaningfully.
Why can I not see every fund over the longer window?
Because only 25 of the 34 funds have that much tracked history. Showing a fund over a period it did not exist for would be inventing history.
Does a fund leading both windows mean it will keep leading?
No. It means its record does not depend on one good stretch, which is a filter rather than a prediction.
Do these figures assume I reinvested dividends?
Yes, that is the default basis. You can switch any figure on the site to treat dividends as cash instead.