The point
Growth and value are labels that an index provider's rulebook hands to a stock. A stock can be 60 percent growth and 40 percent value at once, and the same company can sit on different sides in two providers' lists. What you own is whatever the rule says it is.
What do growth and value actually mean?
A growth stock is a company expected to raise revenue and profit faster than its peers, and its share price tends to carry the market's hopes for the future. A value stock sells for less than its fundamentals suggest, and its price tends to reflect what the business already earns. The Associated Press set out the same split in 2005, when S&P rebuilt its style indexes.
Those are the definitions in words. A fund or an index cannot hold a definition in words. It needs a rule that sorts several thousand listed companies into one list or the other, and someone has to write that rule down.
Who decides which stock is growth and which is value?
The index provider decides, with a formula. In October 2005 S&P was retiring its S&P/Barra style benchmarks. The Associated Press wrote that they relied solely on a stock's price-to-book value to sort growth from value. A company was cheap against the value of its assets or it was not, and that single ratio set the label.
S&P replaced it with an approach that evaluates seven factors and gives each company a style score. Stocks that are not fully growth or fully value have their market cap split between the two indexes. Institutional Investor reported that the old indexes stopped real-time data on December 16, 2005. It quoted the chairman of S&P's index committee saying the new ones rested on a more reliable delineation of growth and value.
The companies stayed as they were. The rulebook changed, and each company's list changed with it.
How the split works, with rupee arithmetic
Take the score idea from that 2005 change and run it on round numbers. This is illustrative arithmetic, not a real company or a real index.
A company has a market cap of ₹10,000 crore and scores 60 percent growth and 40 percent value. A style index that splits by score puts ₹6,000 crore of it in the growth index (10,000 × 0.60) and ₹4,000 crore in the value index (10,000 × 0.40). Under a rule that forces a yes or no, the whole ₹10,000 crore goes to one side and nothing to the other.
Now put it at portfolio scale. A ₹1 crore portfolio holds a growth index in which that company is 3 percent, which is ₹3 lakh (1,00,00,000 × 0.03). If the provider rewrites its rule and the company moves to the value list, that ₹3 lakh of your growth holding goes with it at the next reconstitution. You decided nothing, and your exposure still changed.
Why two growth indexes can disagree
Because the rule is the product, two providers who both say growth can hold different things. Institutional Investor gave a 2005 example. Take the three months ended June 30, 2005. An investment consultant told the magazine that S&P/Barra said large-cap value led, while Russell said large-cap growth led.
The same article put the gap between the two rival value indexes at 2.2 percentage points for the year through September 30, 2005. Across ten years the average gap was 1.7 percentage points a year. Both were growth and value indexes on large US stocks. They differed in methodology and in the universe of stocks they drew from, and that was enough.
This is history about how two rulebooks behaved. A label tells you which rulebook the list came from, and the rulebook decides the rest.
What to read before you buy a style label
Three things sit in every style rulebook, and each one is a question you can put to a fund factsheet or an index document.
Which measures decide the label
Price-to-book alone is a rule. Seven factors is a different rule. A rulebook that leans on earnings growth puts different companies on the growth list than one that leans on sales. Read the list of measures before you read the name.
How a borderline stock is handled
Some rules force every stock onto one side. Others split a stock's weight by its score, as S&P's 2005 approach did. The first produces sudden jumps when a company crosses the line. The second produces gradual drift. You want to know which one your holding runs on.
When the rule can change
Providers revise style rules, as the 2005 episode shows. A holding that matched your view under one version may not under the next. The question to ask is who can change the rule, how much notice a holder gets, and where the change is published.
Our opinion: a basket is a written rule, and the rule is what you are buying
A growth label is a shortcut for a rulebook you have not read. The honest way to hold any basket, in equities or in crypto, is to read the rule first and the name second.
Qatobit holds its own indexes to that standard. QSI Growth holds Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Gold and a stable reserve, and it is rebalanced monthly on a published methodology. The word Growth in the name is a label, and the methodology is what decides what is inside and how it moves back toward its weights. Anyone who wants to invest in QSI Growth can read that methodology first.
The 0.35 percent rebalance fee, the only index fee, is stated on the fee page, and there is no annual management fee and no exit load. Any index you consider elsewhere deserves the same reading: its rule, its fee, and who can change either.
Where to go next
Our piece on how a coin gets in and gets cut under a crypto index's rules shows how a rulebook decides membership. Who sets the rules of a crypto index, and whether they can change covers how revisions happen. For the construction behind our flagship, see what QSI Growth is, its methodology and monthly rebalancing.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between growth and value investing?
Growth investing holds companies expected to raise revenue and profit faster than their peers. Value investing holds companies priced low against what they already earn or own. In an index, a written rule that scores each company sets the difference.
Who decides whether a stock is growth or value?
The index provider decides, using a formula. In 2005 S&P moved from a price-to-book-only rule to one that evaluates seven factors and gives each company a style score, and the lists changed with the formula.
Can a stock be both growth and value?
In some rulebooks, yes. S&P's 2005 approach split the market cap of a stock that was not fully growth or fully value between the two indexes, according to its score. A company that scores 60 percent growth puts 60 percent of its market cap in the growth index.
Do two growth indexes hold the same stocks?
Not necessarily. Institutional Investor reported in 2005 that S&P and Russell style indexes on large US stocks sent different signals, because their methodologies and stock universes differed. The label is shared and the rulebooks are not.
How does QSI Growth decide what it holds?
QSI Growth holds Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Gold and a stable reserve, and rebalances monthly on a published methodology. The index fee is 0.35 percent per rebalance, with no annual management fee and no exit load.
Sources, read on 26 October 2026: Associated Press via HeraldNet, "S&P updates growth, value stock formulas", published October 8, 2005, https://www.heraldnet.com/2005/10/08/sp-updates-growth-value-stock-formulas/. Institutional Investor, "Style makeovers", November 10, 2005, https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/b150nnl0411gds/style-makeovers.
Crypto investments are subject to market risk. Not financial advice.
“A better allocation begins with a better explanation.”
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