According to the September 2026 DSP Mutual Fund Netra report titled 'Early Signals Through Charts,' 99% of all 10-year SIPs delivered returns higher than debt with a median of 14.2%. The report analyzed every 10-year SIP in the Sensex TRI from September 1996 to August 2026, comparing them against the CRISIL Money Market A-I Index as a proxy for debt. However, the findings reveal that 81% of successful SIPs gave negative returns at certain phases during their journey, with 97% underperforming debt at different points along the way.
The report found that 95% of SIPs hit a rough patch in the first five years, with another 60% experiencing a second rough patch between years six and 10. According to DSP Mutual Fund, the years six to 10 phase is described as 'where quitting feels more prudent than staying invested.' A median SIP spent roughly 16 months trailing debt during its 10-year run, with the problem of trailing fixed deposits not evenly spread across the tenure.
The September 2026 DSP Mutual Fund Netra report has quantified the devastating impact of stopping SIPs during market crises. A ₹10,000 monthly SIP on the Nifty 50 TRI would have grown to approximately ₹87.3 lakh over 20 years from September 2006 to August 2026. However, the report calculated that stopping during major crises resulted in significant permanent losses. Stopping during the global financial crisis (2008-09) cost ₹10.3 lakh, Eurozone crisis (2011-12) cost ₹6.8 lakh, taper tantrum (2013-14) cost ₹5.0 lakh, and Covid crash (2020-21) cost ₹2.7 lakh. Every stop, however brief, left a permanent dent on the final corpus, with the GFC stop being the costliest, destroying more than 40% of everything invested over two decades.
The report also examined withdrawal behavior during market crises, calculating the impact of pulling out 50% of the corpus at each crisis trough. Withdrawing 50% during the global financial crisis reduced the final corpus to ₹75.7 lakh, during the taper tantrum to ₹61.8 lakh, and during Covid to ₹49.0 lakh. An investor who stopped contributions during Covid ended with ₹84.6 lakh, but pulling out half the money at the bottom resulted in a devastating ₹38.3 lakh haircut, demonstrating how withdrawals leave bigger dents on the final corpus compared to temporary stoppages.
As reported by DSP Mutual Fund, SIPs work in markets which either rise over time or are volatile but recover. Only in markets which are in a secular decline do SIPs produce negative absolute returns. The report identified that India's equity market has historically fallen into the first two categories, explaining why the 10-year record is so overwhelmingly positive. However, investors face significant behavioral challenges during crises, as both stoppage risk and withdrawal risk tend to strike at the worst possible time, during market downturns, when job uncertainty, layoffs, and pay cuts are also elevated. This is precisely when investors face urgent cash needs, forcing them to stop their SIPs or withdraw from them, right when staying invested matters the most.
