Is your SIP Immune Against Disruption?

🔊 Read Aloud This Article

What is Systematic Investment Plan (SIP)?

SIP is an investment strategy where you invest a fixed amount of money regularly. This strategy works well for individuals who want to invest in the stock market but don’t have a large amount of savings. This strategy aims to average out the cost of investment by buying units at different prices.

Advantages of SIP.

• Disciplined Investment: SIP helps you to invest regularly, which can be a great discipline for your investments.
• Averaging Out: By investing a fixed amount regularly, you average out the cost of investment, reducing the impact of market volatility.
• Long-term Investment: SIP is a long-term investment strategy, making it ideal for individuals who want to create wealth over the long term.

Disadvantages of SIP.

• Less Control: With SIP, you have limited control over the investment, as you can only choose the amount to invest and not the asset price.
• Potential for Lower Returns: By investing a small amount regularly, you may miss out on potential gains that a Lump Sum investment could generate.
• Averaging Out: Averaging turns into a disadvantage when the Market suddenly collapses after a Continuous uptrend for a longer period. Just like what happened in 2020.

How Advantage can become Disadvantage.

The above-mentioned chart shows how the averaging line moves upward despite the decreasing NAV, and this trend will continue until the NAV drops below the average. Due to this behavior, SIP becomes very sensitive to market volatility, and the drawdown in SIP is more than the benchmark. The averaging of SIP can only be reduced when the NAV goes below the averaging, which means your portfolio enters the red zone, and profits turn into losses.

See the following table for how SIP returns dropped in just a two-month period.

The above table and chart illustrate that SIP can protect you from regular market volatility, but it cannot withstand major disruptions in the market like 2008-09 (Global Financial Crisis) and 2020 (Corona Pandemic)

So the clear answer to the question is “No”, SIP (Systematic Investment Plan) is not immune to a major disruption in the Market. Like any other investment, SIPs are subject to market risk and can be affected by various factors, such as economic conditions, interest rate volatility, and geopolitical events.

Is It Possible To Immunise SIP Against Disruption?

Yes, it is possible but first of all, we need to find out the root cause of the problem. Let us dissect the above scenario. First, we need to get out of the bias about averaging. Averaging does not always be in favour of a portfolio. It may come as a surprise to some, but it is true.

Root Cause

The above chart shows that despite market corrections, your “Averaging” increases over time. From Aug 2015 to Feb 2016 and Oct 2019 to Mar 2020 NAV was decreasing but averaging was increasing. Do you know why this happened? The reason for this is that your purchase price was higher than your average price over the entire period in both scenarios. This leads to a reduction in returns from both the increase in averaging and the decrease in NAVs, resulting in the portfolio being more impacted by market disruptions than the market itself, as seen in the above table. Market returns reduced from 11.51% to 4.13% (Reduced by almost ~7%), while SIP returns reduced from 11.55% to -4.47% (Reduced by almost ~16%), which is more than double the reduction of the Market returns. We are facing huge losses in SIP during disruptions in the market because we never Book the Profit in SIP, so the Notional Gain turns into a Notional Loss.

Having knowledge of the root cause makes finding a solution easier for us.

Finding The Solution

Are you driving four-wheelers? You might be aware of how to reduce the risk of an accident by using CBA. CBA is the ABC of driving, which you should know. CBA stands for Clutch, Brake & Accelerator. Press the Clutch, press the Brake and slow down the vehicle to avoid an accident. Once the road gets cleared, use an accelerator to increase the speed. An identical process is to be applied to immunise the SIP. We all know that Vaccination Dose is to be taken before getting infected for building Immunity in the body.

Just like while driving, you are pressing the Clutch and Brake when you think there is a chance of an accident, same way you must take appropriate action to avoid the disastrous moment of distraction in the valuations.

Just as you use the clutch and brake while driving a car on a steep road to avoid an accident, use profit booking and reinvestment as the clutch and brake for diversification in alternative asset classes while investing in evading an accident during a volatile market.

As you can see in the CBA adoption in investment charts, when the market enters the higher-risk zone, the accumulated amount should be transferred to lower-risk assets like Debt. And once the risk is reduced in the market, reinvest the same amount.

CBA in SIP is nothing but a Cost-Benefit Analysis.

What is Cost Benefit Analysis?

One of the main ways people make decisions is by using cost-benefit analysis (or CBA).

Whether you’re a renter considering purchasing a new home or a business weighing a new sales strategy, you’re probably using a CBA. It’s an integral part of corporate, individual and even government decision-making.

Cost-benefit analysis is a process used primarily by businesses that weigh the sum of the benefits, such as financial gain, of an action against the negatives, or costs, of that action. The technique is often used when trying to decide a course of action, and often incorporates Rupee amounts for intangible benefits as well as the opportunity cost into its calculations. 

Although CBA can be used for short-term decisions, it is often used when a company or individual has a long-term decision.

CBA is an easy tool to determine which potential decision would make the most financial sense for the business or individual. The process also takes indirect benefits or costs into consideration, like customer satisfaction or even employee morale. And opportunity cost often plays a big role when deciding between several options. When listing potential costs and benefits, companies or analysts will often factor in things like labour costs, social benefits and other factors that may not be immediately obvious. 

In the coming blog article, we will discuss CBA

Conclusion:

In conclusion, while SIPs are not immune to disruption, they offer several advantages that can help reduce the impact of market volatility and minimize the impact of emotions and impulsive decision-making and can help you stay focused on your long-term investment goals.