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Summary: Jio BlackRock’s latest mid-cap fund is coming soon. But before you jump in, see how the Nifty Midcap 150 – the index this new fund will track – has actually performed over the years. We dive deep into the index's recent and long-term performance, rolling return history and how it compares with active funds. The numbers may surprise you…
Jio BlackRock, the collaboration between Reliance and global investing giant BlackRock, is about to launch three new equity index funds. Among them is the Jio BlackRock Nifty Midcap 150 Index Fund, which will be a pure-play bet on the mid-cap space.
But what exactly does this fund track, and more importantly, what kind of returns can investors expect?
First, what is the Nifty Midcap 150 Index?
The Nifty Midcap 150 TRI index represents the next rung of stocks just below the large caps. It consists of 150 companies ranked 101 to 250 based on full market capitalisation from the Nifty 500 universe. Put simply, they are the 101st to 251st largest publicly-listed companies in the country based on their market value.
Mid-cap companies typically sit in the sweet spot: they have the potential to scale faster than large caps but are more established than volatile small caps. As a result, they offer the twin advantages of growth and relative stability.
Where does the index invest?
The index is rebalanced every six months. Right now, its top five stocks are:
- BSE: 3.08 per cent weight
- Max Healthcare Institute: 2.59 per cent
- Suzlon Energy: 2.21 per cent
- Persistent Systems: 1.77 per cent
- Coforge: 1.75 per cent
Sector-wise, the index is diversified across:
- Financial Services: 23.83 per cent weight
- Capital Goods: 14.4 per cent
- Healthcare: 11.33 per cent
- Information Technology: 6.79 per cent
- Automobile and Auto Components: 6.3 per cent
This wide spread means investors get exposure to multiple growth engines within the Indian economy.
What kind of returns has the index generated?
As of June 30, 2025, the Nifty Midcap 150 index has annually delivered:
- One-year return: 6.11 per cent
- Five-year return: 32.31 per cent
- Since inception (April 2005): 17.85 per cent
These numbers highlight a familiar story with equities: short-term returns can swing sharply, but over longer horizons, the volatility tends to smooth out. That’s why the five-year and since-inception figures look far more impressive than the recent one-year return.
Still, to truly assess an index’s reliability, we need to go beyond point-to-point returns, and that’s where rolling returns come in.
What are rolling returns, and why do they matter?
Rolling returns show how consistently an investment performs over different time periods. They help smooth out the noise of market timing and reveal long-term patterns.
To truly understand how consistently the Nifty Midcap 150 has performed, let’s look at its five-year daily rolling returns over the last five years. This tells us what your annualised return would’ve been if you had invested on any day in that period and held it for five years.
Here’s what the data shows:
- 0–5 per cent returns: Not even once. The index has never delivered such low five-year returns in this period.
- 6–9.99 per cent: Only 4.87 per cent of the time
- 10–15 per cent: About 27.17 per cent of the time
- More than 15 per cent: A whopping 67.96 per cent of the time
In simpler terms, if you picked any day in the past five years and stayed invested for five years from that point, your annualised return would’ve been over 10 per cent in 95 per cent of the cases, and over 15 per cent nearly 68 per cent of the time.
But what about active mid-cap funds?
Active mid-cap funds are managed by fund managers who do the stock picking, aiming to beat the benchmark. These funds have the flexibility to overweight sectors, avoid weak stocks or time their entries and exits, unlike index funds, which must follow the index regardless of market conditions.
So, have the active funds been able to beat the index? Here’s how they have performed over the same daily five-year rolling periods:
- 0–5 per cent annual returns: 0.2 per cent of the time
- 6–10 per cent returns: 12.15 per cent of the time
- 11–15 per cent returns: 66.02 per cent of the time
- Above 15 per cent returns: 19.44 per cent of the time
That means active funds were able to deliver above 10 per cent returns over 85 per cent of the time — still strong, but less consistent than the Nifty Midcap 150’s 95 per cent.
So, should you choose an index mid-cap fund?
At Value Research, we’ve long maintained that mid-cap is one of the few equity segments where skilled fund managers can still add meaningful value, by avoiding low-quality companies and managing risk through market cycles.
That said, the game is changing. With the rise of low-cost, data-driven strategies like the Jio BlackRock Nifty Midcap 150 Index Fund, investors now have a viable, low-cost route to ride India’s mid-cap growth story.
But before you get carried away by the strong performance numbers, there are three important caveats.
Back-tested data: Some of the performance data is back-tested. That means the index was constructed retroactively to simulate how it might have performed using past data, not how it actually did in live market conditions. While useful, such numbers don’t capture the full messiness of real-world investing.
Can be difficult to trade: Mid-cap stocks are harder to buy and sell in large volumes, especially during market downturns.
Tracking error: Add to that the fact that the index is rebalanced quarterly—meaning frequent buying and selling—and you end up with high transaction costs. These frictions lead to tracking error, a gap between the index’s theoretical returns and what the fund actually delivers. While this is low in large-cap passive funds, in mid- and small-cap funds, tracking error can go up much higher. Simply put, the higher tracking error can eat into your gains.
What should you do?
If you want broad, cost-efficient exposure to India’s mid-cap universe, the Jio BlackRock Nifty Midcap 150 Index Fund could be a useful addition, especially given the index’s consistent daily rolling returns in the last few years.
But because most of these mid-cap index funds are still young, don’t make it a core holding just yet. Use it tactically, limit exposure to 5 to 10 per cent of your portfolio and keep expectations grounded.
Meanwhile, active mid-cap funds, especially those from the time-tested fund houses, can still earn their keep.
Want to start a Rs 5,000+ SIP in a mid-cap fund?
Don’t waste five years finding a winning mid-cap fund that can not just match the mid-cap index, but also beat it. Because we’ve already done it for you.
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Also read: Jio BlackRock to launch 3 new equity index funds soon
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