When a mutual fund's alpha is listed as "29.57" does that mean it outperformed "the market" by almost 30%?

External question — Personal Finance Stack Exchange Author: James Bowery Original post: https://money.stackexchange.com/questions/132627 License: CC BY-SA 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ Adaptation: HTML converted to plain text; contact email addresses removed. A broker's site shows me a list of mutual funds sorted by alpha with the top being Morgan Stanley at "29.57" but provides no information on how to interpret this number. I know that the y-intercept of the linear regression of this fund with "the market" (whatever benchmark is chosen) is "29.57", but the scale on the y-axis is not specified. Based on about everything out there, I would have to assume the scale is % and therefore the mutual fund is returning about 30% over "the market". Is this a correct interpretation? A secondary question: What is the likely definition of "the market" for such a mutual fund's alpha? Is it all mutual funds? Is it S&P 500?