HSBC MF has launched a new and timely investor education campaign titled “Stay DiSIPlined” – a play on the word discipline that highlights the one thing that investors should do when investing in SIPs – stay disciplined.
In a market which has traded sideways for more than 2 frustrating years, investors who typically started their SIPs 2-3 years ago have little to show by way of returns, the most common objection being “even an FD would have been better’”.
History has shown repeatedly that staying diSIPlined through such challenging phases, accumulating units each month, has hugely rewarded investors when the next market upswing inevitably comes.
Industry data is suggesting that overall SIP book growth has slowed down a bit – even as gross inflows continue to grow at a healthy clip – largely because SIP stoppages have started growing in the last 6-7 months. Most of these SIP stoppages are those that were started around 2 years ago.
Stay DiSIPlined is an initiative that Ankur asks distributors to take especially to this cohort of investors – as they are the most vulnerable to abandon long term plans out of frustration of little to no returns.
The campaign includes a catchy contemporary ad aimed at the young investor – who is otherwise very disciplined in different aspects of life where they see near term outcomes (fitness, punctuality etc) but sees that discipline wavering with every gyration of the market – perhaps because outcomes will only be seen in the long term and therefore are not immediately visible.
Ankur says when investors’ minds are clouded with so many market variables including oil prices, FII selling, PEs and promoters diluting stake through IPOs etc, it is important to focus on the one thing that ultimately drives stock prices in the long term: earnings growth.
The good news is that earnings growth trajectory is now positive – we are coming out of an earnings slump and last 2 quarters have seen encouraging signs of growth. So long as corporate profit growth trend is in the right direction, cut out all the other noise and just Stay DiSIPlined.