AMFI

The Association of Mutual Funds in India, the industry body of the fund houses. It is not the regulator, which is SEBI, but it runs the plumbing the regulator relies on: it publishes every scheme's net asset value each business day, registers mutual fund distributors, and publishes monthly industry data on assets, flows and SIP contributions.

Its most used output is the list that sorts listed companies into large, mid and small cap every six months, which decides what each category of equity fund may hold.

For an analyst, the monthly flow data shows how much domestic money is entering equity funds. Since SIPs became widespread, that money has been a large and steady force in Indian markets. A month of net outflows from equity funds is rare enough to be news.

Watch the monthly flows.