Pausing SIP or exiting funds today? It can erase 9% returns

Summary: Think pausing your SIP or exiting your investments during a market fall is harmless? You could be giving up 9 per cent returns. Sure, every correction feels different. But the mistake investors make in every correction is the same: trying to time it. This piece breaks down the real cost of exiting too soon — and how rupee cost averaging quietly compounds your wealth. On Thursday, the Sensex opened 600 points lower, shedding over Rs 5 lakh crore in notional investor wealth after US President Donald Trump imposed a 25 per cent tariff on Indian goods starting August 1, 2025. Couple that with the Indo-US free trade deal hanging in limbo and foreign investors continuing to pull out money, and volatility is expected to rule the charts for the next few weeks. In moments like these, panic feels like the rational thing to do. That urge to exit your equity mutual funds or hit pause on your SIPs? It’s understandable. But here’s the paradox: The price of avoiding pain in the market is often missing out on the gain. The costly penalty of missing the market’s best days Our guest columnist Shyamali Basu summed it up beautifully in a recent piece: “If we study the Sensex from January 1990 to March 2022, it delivered an annualised return of 13.71 per cent. But if you missed ju

This article was originally published on July 31, 2025.