How do you actually pick a fund once you stop trusting star ratings?

Most Indian investors start fund research at a ratings page — 5-star, "top performer," Gold/Silver. But the rating is someone else's judgment call baked into a single symbol, and the methodology behind it is rarely something you can inspect or reproduce.

The alternative is doing it yourself from raw data, which is where it gets tedious. AMFI publishes NAV history for every scheme for free, so rolling returns, drawdowns, volatility, and SIP outcomes are all computable — but almost nobody wants to maintain a spreadsheet across 14,000 schemes to get there.

I built WealthTicker (wealthticker.in) partly out of that frustration: everything on it is computed from public AMFI NAV data, so you can see the inputs instead of a verdict. But I'm more curious how other people solve this than in talking about my own tool.

So — for those of you who've moved past ratings:

• Which metrics actually change your mind? Rolling returns, downside capture, expense ratio drift, manager tenure, something else?

• Do you weight the fund manager, or treat the process/mandate as the thing that matters?

• Has backtesting a SIP against historical NAVs ever made you drop a fund you liked, or does it mostly confirm what you already thought?