Volatility is the fee. Compounding is the payout.

Since January 2000 the Nifty 50 has risen in 179 months and fallen in 130, roughly a 58:42 split. Falls are not an aberration in this record; they are two-fifths of it. Anyone promising equity returns without falling months is describing a different asset class.

The two extremes carry the real lesson. The worst month in the record, October 2008 at −26.4%, arrived when the system itself seemed to be failing. The best month, +28.1%, came in May 2009: seven months later, while most headlines were still grim. The investors who captured the second had only one qualification: they were still invested after the first.

That is why timing fails in practice. The best months cluster next to the worst ones, and exiting to avoid the latter almost guarantees missing the former. Over the full 26 years the index multiplied about 26 times: a payout collected only by those who kept paying the volatility fee.

A monthly SIP is how ordinary investors put the 58:42 split to work: automatically buying more in the red months.