The bear-market percentile rank details how a fund has performed relative to all funds in its asset class during bear markets.

For stock funds, a bear market is defined as all months in the past five years that the S&P 500 lost more than 3%; for bond funds, it's all months in the past five years that the Barclays Capital Aggregate Bond Index lost more than 1%.

Morningstar adds a fund's performance during each bear-market month to reach a total bear-market return. Based on these returns, each fund is then assigned a percentile ranking.

Stock funds are ranked separately from bond funds. Use this figure to analyze how well a fund performs during market downturns, relative to its peers. Morningstar generates this figure in-house, based on the monthly total returns for the funds during those periods defined as bear-market months.

The highest (or most favorable) percentile rank is 1 and the lowest (or least favorable) percentile rank is 100. The top-performing fund in the asset class will always receive a rank of 1.

Example: A fund with a bear-market rank of 5 has withstood poor markets relatively well, while one with a rank of 95 has not.