Gold Fell 10% in a Day. My SIP Didn’t Notice.

On January 30, my family’s WhatsApp groups went from celebrating gold to panicking about it in one afternoon. My ₹500 SIP did not even blink.

From record to rout

Gold reached nearly $5,600 an ounce on January 29, its highest ever. The next day, after President Trump named Kevin Warsh as the next chair of the Federal Reserve, markets decided interest rates might stay higher for longer. Gold had its worst day in decades, falling around 10%, and silver fell close to 30% in a single session. In India, people who had bought jewellery or gold ETFs at the top watched a month of gains disappear before dinner.

My aunts had been sharing gold price screenshots for weeks, each one higher than the last. On January 30 the screenshots stopped, and the questions started. Should they sell before it fell further? Should they buy more now that it was cheaper? Nobody knew, because nobody had planned for a fall.

Why my SIP did not care

I have a ₹500 monthly SIP in a Nifty index fund, which my mother helped me set up last year. On the morning of February 2, ₹500 left her account and bought units, as it does every month. It did not check the gold price. It did not read the news about the Fed. If the market had fallen, the same ₹500 would simply have bought more units. That is the whole idea of rupee cost averaging.

I am not saying index funds are better than gold. They fell too at times last year. My point is about behaviour. The gold buyers in my family were making a decision every day, based on the latest price and the latest message. My SIP makes no decisions at all. It removes the one thing that usually hurts small investors, which is reacting to a scary day.

What a sensible mix looks like

Gold still has a place. It protects against a falling rupee and against crises, and Indian families hold it for good reasons. The trouble begins when people treat it as a quick way to get rich because it went up for a year. After a 60% rise in 2025, gold was not a safe asset anymore. It was a popular one, which is different.

The best advice I have read is boring. Decide in advance how much of your savings goes into shares, gold and safe deposits, and stick to it unless your life changes. Then let the price do whatever it wants. A plan you made on a calm day is almost always better than a decision made on a panicked one.