In investing, "worst-case" isn't a theoretical construct — it's a real date in the past with a real investor sitting at a screen watching numbers drop. For PGIM India Flexi Cap Fund - Direct Plan - Direct Growth, that date was 23 Mar 2020.
The starting point
PGIM India Flexi Cap Fund - Direct Plan - Direct Growth hit an all-time high on 12 Feb 2020. Anyone who invested at or near that point was about to experience the worst stretch in the fund's history.
Peak to trough
Over the next 1 months, the fund slid 36.4% to its trough on 23 Mar 2020. On that day, every holder was staring at a paper loss of nearly 36% from the peak. News stories were grim. Financial advisors' phones were ringing non-stop.
This is the number nobody shows you on the fund card. The "3-year CAGR 18%" and "5-star rating" on every fund page — none of them tell you the fund has been down 36% at one point.
The wait
The fund didn't reach a new all-time high until 21 Jul 2020 — 4 months after the trough. If someone had bought right at the peak on 12 Feb 2020 and held on through, that's how long they waited to be back at break-even.
Translated into human terms: a lump-sum investor who bought at the peak would have waited about 4 months to see their original amount back on the screen. For someone who kept SIPping through the fall, the recovery was faster on a per-rupee basis — they bought extra units cheap — but the emotional ride was the same.
What this means for investors
Drawdowns like this are the price of admission for equity returns. There's no equity mutual fund in India that's avoided a 36%-ish fall at some point — they either had one or the market's correction hasn't arrived yet. The question is whether you can mentally hold through it.
The one thing data from past cycles consistently shows: people who panic-sell at the trough lock in the loss; people who keep systematic contributions going (SIP or otherwise) through the fall end up with more units at a lower average cost. It's the hardest thing to do emotionally and the simplest thing to do mechanically.
For the full price-time chart and this fund's current state, see .