In a few weeks the season starts. Navratri, then Dussehra, then the run-up to Diwali. And every year, alongside the lights and the sweets, the investment world gets noticeably louder. Special messages. Festive SIPs. New fund launches timed for the season. Limited windows. I get forwarded several of these each week from clients asking whether they should act.
We don't run anything like that ourselves, and I'd like to explain why, because it isn't disapproval of the festivals.
What the festival offers usually are
Mostly, three things.
New fund launches timed for the season, when people are feeling generous and optimistic. Our page on new fund offers explains why the timing of a launch tends to reflect demand rather than opportunity.
"Auspicious" SIPs, which are ordinary SIPs with a festive name and a suggested start date.
Urgency, in some form. Start before Dhanteras. Last day for the special launch. Limited period.
None of these changes anything about the underlying investment. A SIP started on Dhanteras is the same SIP as one started the week after.
Why the season is a poor time to decide
It isn't that people are foolish during festivals. It's that the conditions work against careful decisions.
Money arrives in the form of bonuses, gifts or just a looser sense of the month. Families gather, and investment opinions come out alongside the food. Everybody is busy, so decisions get made quickly. And there's a background sense that the season is lucky, which is lovely for many things and irrelevant for this one.
Our post on the festival bonus conversation covers the money side, and the relative who tells you what to invest in covers the family dinner side.
What I'm not saying
I love this season. Most people here do.
I'm not saying don't start anything during the festivals. If you've already decided, after thinking about it properly, to start a SIP, and you'd like it to begin on a day that means something to you, that's entirely fine. Our post on waiting for an auspicious day covers exactly that.
The distinction is between starting something you had already decided on and deciding something because of the season. The first uses the festival well. The second lets the festival make the decision.
Why a distributor would pass on this
It's a fair question. Festival offers work. They bring in money. From a purely commercial view, staying quiet costs us.
But I've watched what happens to the money that arrives in a rush. A good share of it sits in something that didn't fit the person's dates, chosen because it was presented at a moment of goodwill. Some of it is withdrawn at a loss within two years. A fair amount of it goes into a scheme the person can't explain six months later.
Some of those people come to me later, usually slightly embarrassed, wanting to know what to do with a folio they opened in a hurry during a season when the whole city was celebrating and nobody around them was in the mood to ask a careful question about exit loads, holding periods or whether the scheme even fitted what they were saving for.
I'd rather have fewer new instalments that last than more that don't. Our post on the part of this job you never see covers what we think the job actually is.
The gold question, again
It comes up every year so I'll say it once more.
Gold bought for the family at Dhanteras is tradition, and I have no interest in arguing with it. Gold bought as an investment is an investment, and deserves the same questions as anything else. Our page on gold ETF versus gold fund covers the financial route if that's what you want.
Both can happen in the same house on the same day. Just know which one you're doing.
What I'd suggest instead
Use the season as a reminder rather than a trigger.
The festivals come at the same time every year. That makes them a good annual checkpoint. Is the buffer still the right size? Are all the instalments running? Is the amount still right for your income? Are the nominees current? Does everybody in the family know what exists?
None of that involves buying anything. All of it is more useful than a festive launch. Our page on nomination and our post on the questions that seem irrelevant cover most of what's worth checking.
If you've already acted on one
Plenty of people will, and that's no disaster.
Pull a consolidated statement after the season and look at what you started. Does it fit a goal with a date? Is the amount sustainable? If yes, carry on. If not, stop the new instalment and put the money where it fits, without selling what you've already bought unless there's a real reason to. Our page on when to sell covers what counts as a real reason.
The launches, specifically
I get asked about new fund offers more in October than in the rest of the year combined, so it's worth being specific.
A new scheme launched during the festivals has no history of its own. The manager may have a record elsewhere, and the category may be sensible, but the scheme itself is starting from nothing. The low unit price at launch isn't a bargain, because the price of a unit tells you nothing about value.
If the category fills a genuine gap in your plan, there are almost always existing schemes in it with years of history to look at. If it doesn't fill a gap, the launch is just a new way to hold something you already have. Our page on portfolio overlap is useful for checking that.
The message I'd send if I sent one
If I did send a festive message, it would be short. Check that your SIPs went through this month. Check that your nominee is still who you want. Tell one other person in the family what exists and where. That's it.
It would never make a sale. It would probably do more good than most of the ones that do. Maybe I'll send it one year, but I suspect this post is the closer thing to it.
And if you're reading this after the festivals, the same list still applies. There's no deadline on any of it, which is rather the point.
What families tell me in January
The pattern after the season is consistent enough that I can almost predict the calls.
Somebody started two new SIPs in October, both in a burst of goodwill, and by January the amounts are pinching. A bonus went into a scheme that turned out to have an exit load nobody mentioned. A cousin's suggestion at Diwali has quietly become a folio nobody remembers opening.
Small things. Fixable things.
None of this is dramatic. It's just the ordinary cost of deciding quickly in a busy, happy month. And almost all of it is avoidable by waiting two weeks and deciding in November instead.
That's really the whole advice. Enjoy the season. Make the decision after it.
Why a quiet month is underrated
There's something to be said for making money decisions when nothing is happening.
No festival, no bonus, no market headline, no relative at the table. Just an ordinary Tuesday, a cup of tea and a statement. Those are the conditions under which people make the choices they're still happy with years later. Our post on what to ignore in the first two years is partly about protecting those quiet decisions from noise.
What you'll get from us this season
Nothing, unless you ask.
No festive messages, no special launches, no countdown. If you'd like to start something, or review what you hold, we're here the same as any other month. And if you've been forwarded an offer and want a second view, send it over. There's no charge, and quite often the most useful thing I can say is that it's fine but it isn't urgent.
Myfolios is an AMFI-registered mutual fund distributor (ARN-145870) working from Indore since 2014. Happy festivals, whenever they start for you.
