How do I check whether two mutual funds hold the same stocks?

Put the two funds side by side and compare their top holdings and the share of the portfolio they have in common. Funds can carry different names, different fund houses and different managers while owning near-identical stocks — most large-cap-heavy Indian funds draw from the same few dozen companies. FundLens shows each fund's top constituents with weightings, and computes an overlap percentage when you compare two funds head to head.

How much overlap is too much depends on why you hold both. Two funds in the same category sharing most of their portfolio are effectively one holding with two expense ratios: no extra diversification for the extra fee and paperwork. Across categories — a large cap alongside a small cap, say — low overlap is exactly the point, and is the reason holding both makes sense.

Overlap alone shouldn't decide it, though. Two funds can own the same companies at very different weights, which changes both the returns and the depth of the drawdowns. Read overlap next to category, risk-adjusted numbers and cost before deciding which of two similar funds to keep — and remember holdings shift each quarter, so an overlap figure is a snapshot, not a permanent property.