The pain is part of the deal: miss the 10 best days and lose almost half the growth
Over 12½ years, ₹100 in the NIFTY 50 grew to ₹385. Miss just its 10 best days and it grew to ₹234. Those days arrived in the middle of the worst falls, which is exactly when people step aside. A system defined in advance, carried out automatically, keeps you in for them.
Every equity investor knows the feeling. The market falls, then falls again, and stepping aside “until things settle” starts to feel sensible. But the market never announces when things have settled, and the recovery usually starts while the news is still bad.
A live example: the NIFTY Midcap 150 fell 12.5% from its August high to 23 October 2026, back to where it stood in early April. In the nine sessions that followed, to 5 November, it bounced 8.2%. Nobody rang a bell at the bottom.
Missing just 10 days out of 3,092 cost almost half of the growth, and most of those days came in the middle of the Covid crash. The investor who sells to escape the pain is very likely to be on the sidelines when they arrive.
Decide when you’re calm, not when it hurts
A defined system settles every rule at the start, while you are calm: what to hold, when to change it, and what happens in a fall. “Step aside until it feels safe” is not decided in the heat of a drawdown, because the system never offered it as a choice. A bad month doesn’t trigger a new decision; you follow the plan you already wrote.
Automation goes one step further. The orders go in on schedule whether you feel brave that day or not, so the plan doesn’t depend on your nerve in the worst week. When the turn comes you are already invested, so there is nothing to chase and no fear of missing out.
Embrace the pain your system signs you up for
Falls are not a sign that something is broken. They are the price of equity returns, and no system can wish them away. Even a strategy that did well over the long run, like our monthly momentum, fell 49% along the way (what that journey felt like). Choose a system whose pain you can live with, know roughly how bad its bad months can get, and then let it run.
Happy Diwali. From all of us at The Algo Bench, wishing you and your family light, good health and a prosperous new Samvat year, and the patience to let your system do its work.
Data: NIFTY 50 price index (dividends excluded), daily closes, 1 January 2014 to 3 July 2026. NIFTY Midcap 150 closes to 5 November 2026. Index figures, so no trading costs. Education only, not investment advice.
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