What it costs to stop or withdraw from SIPs during a market crash: A 20-year comparison

The September 2026 issue of DSP Mutual Fund's Netra report has calculated the cost of such a behaviour.

As per the report, every stop, however brief, left a permanent dent. While the investor resumed the SIP after each crisis, the corpus never caught up with the uninterrupted figure. The dent was higher when SIP was stopped during the early years, with the GFC stop being the costliest, costing approx. ₹10 lakh off the final corpus. That single pause destroyed more than 40% of everything the investor put in over two decades.

For investors, the instalments skipped during a crash are precisely the ones that would have bought the most units at the lowest NAVs of the entire 20-year window.

"Rupee-cost averaging buys more units at low prices, less at high prices, reducing entry-point timing risk," the report said.

When an investor stops during the crash, he buys nothing at those prices, and the recovery gains on those missed units are lost for good.

The report also highlights why stopping clusters at the worst moments. It says 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. "That's precisely when investors face urgent cash needs, forcing them to stop their SIPs or withdraw from them, right when staying invested matters the most," the report said.

Withdrawals leave bigger dent

Withdrawals during market crash leave a bigger dent on the final corpus. The report calculated the final corpus if 50% of the corpus is pulled out at the bottom of each crisis. Here's what it found:

An investor who stopped contributions during Covid ended with ₹84.6 lakh. One who also pulled out half the money at the bottom ended with just ₹49 lakh, a ₹38.3 lakh haircut on the same journey.