Why a start-stop approach to SIPs could hurt your crucial financial goals

You will also lose out on the chance to buy fund units at lower prices and boost returns

Last year when Avantika Singh, 26, a London-based computer chip designer visited India, she was impressed by the returns that mutual funds were giving, and decided to invest in them. All the three funds that an agent sold her were small-cap, because, he said, they would give her higher returns over the long term. Today, with the one-year SIP returns of all small-cap funds, barring one in the negative, she is wondering whether she made a wrong investment decision. 

Singh is not alone. In the past couple of years, when markets were doing well, investors were over-confident about equity investing,