ETMarkets.comThe SIP slip: Blame the calendar
February had only 28 days in 2026, with the final day falling on a Saturday. Under AMFI’s collection rules, SIP debits scheduled for the 29th and 30th automatically roll into March. Shah estimates this mechanical spillover accounts for the bulk of the reported ₹1,200 crore drop. His own firm’s SIP book — which he describes as a proxy for retail India — actually grew by ₹15 crore month-on-month, from ₹1,185 crore to ₹1,200 crore in February.
“There is no change as far as the SIP numbers are concerned,” Shah stated. “My belief is that you will see a good amount of uptick in the March number.” The caveat: March also ends on a holiday weekend, meaning some of that recovery could spill further into April.
“In January, for the first time in mutual fund history, people invested more money in gold than in equity. In February, that number came down from ₹24,000 crore to ₹5,000 crore.”
Gold’s retreat: Euphoria meets volatility
The gold ETF story is more substantive. January’s record ₹24,000 crore inflow was historic — the first time commodity flows surpassed equity allocations in the mutual fund industry. But February’s extreme commodity market volatility, amplified by geopolitical noise, tested investor patience sharply. Distributors, including Shah’s own team, actively advised clients to slow down incremental commodity allocation. The result was a 75% collapse in gold flows and a net outflow of ₹826 crore from silver ETFs, a category that had only entered mainstream investor portfolios in the past year.
Shah expects this caution to persist. “You might see negative flows in gold and silver both in the month of March,” he said, projecting that the commodity allocation euphoria has reached a standstill — likely for the next two to three months at minimum.
ETMarkets.comWhere the smart money went instead
The standout flow story for February was multi-asset allocation funds, which drew ₹10,400 crore — nearly a quarter of total equity category inflows of ₹40,000 crore. Flexicap came in second at ₹7,800 crore, with roughly 65% of that money flowing into large-cap stocks. Shah reads this as a maturing investor base that increasingly prefers to delegate allocation timing to fund managers rather than making direct category calls. Mid and small-cap funds each contributed around ₹3,000 crore, while pure large-cap funds attracted ₹2,000 crore.
The February data, read correctly, paints a picture of a resilient SIP culture with a short-term commodity hangover. For long-term investors, the message is clear: stay the course on SIPs, reduce the recency bias in gold, and let multi-asset funds do the heavy lifting on allocation during volatile phases.