Historically, flows into equity mutual funds have followed a predictable pattern. Whenever the markets are doing well, mutual fun inflows pick up and whenever one-year returns fall into negative territory, flows dry up and even turn negative.
However, unprecedented flows into systematic investment plans (SIPs) of mutual funds have resulted in a rewriting of history. Equity returns have been negative in the past four months. However, net inflows into equity mutual funds remained fairly strong at ₹6,606 crore and ₹6,158 crore in the past two months.