New Delhi, Aug. 20 -- For someone sitting on a large investible corpus, the timing of the first investment can have a noticeable impact on returns in the early years. One way to deal with this is to invest the entire amount at once. Another is to move the money into equity gradually through a six-month STP.

FundsIndia's 25-year analysis of Nifty 50 TRI data shows how these two approaches performed across different market cycles.

The data shows that lumpsum investing had a modest edge over a six-month STP in the medium term. However, as the holding period increased, the gap between the two approaches narrowed considerably.

The medium-term data shows a modest return advantage for lumpsum investing. Across one-, three-, five- and seven-ye...