New Delhi, Aug. 20 -- You've probably heard the advice: invest regularly, stay patient, don't panic during market falls. It is simple and straightforward.

Yet when markets fall, many investors do the opposite. Consider the 2008-09 global financial crisis when broader indices fell by 60-65%. Equity mutual fund monthly flows swung from net inflows of Rs.12,700 crore in January 2008 to net outflows of Rs.2,100 crore in December 2009. Today, despite no major crash and markets delivering near-zero returns over the past two years, monthly equity mutual fund inflows have fallen nearly 30%, from Rs.40,600 crore in June 2024 to Rs.29,000 crore in June 2026.

Why does this happen? Consider a simple two-by-two grid. The horizontal axis represents i...