The Stock Market Is Hiding The Truth From You
Stock investing feels like a maze of numbers, but real gains come from staying invested during rare best days — something advisors, not apps, help navigate.
The Gist
Investing in the Indian stock market requires patience and discipline.
- Missing just 10 to 30 of the best trading days can drastically reduce returns.
- Current market highs mask a troubling reality of narrow gains and significant losses among many stocks.
- Investors should focus on long-term strategies rather than short-term trading influenced by trends and technology.
Here is a data point that should stop every amateur day trader cold.
If you had invested in the Indian stock market over the last 40 years but missed just the 10 best days of movement, your returns would be famously sub-optimal.
But the math gets even more ruthless.
If you missed out on the 30 best days—less than one day per year on average—you would have missed out on 90% of the total returns.
I was given this stark reality check recently by Devina Mehra, the founder of First Global.
The Risk Of Not Being Invested
It encapsulates the asymmetry of wealth creation. While we obsess over the risk of being invested in the market—the crashes, the corrections, the panic—we rarely calculate the risk of not being invested.
This statistic leads to an uncomfortable truth for the millions of retail investors currently glued to their trading apps. You cannot simply dabble in the markets and expect them to do your bidding.
As Mehra put it to me, “The markets have zero interest in the price at which you bought your shares.”
The Mirage Of Prosperity
Yet, looking at the recent headlines, you would be forgiven for thinking otherwise. Last week, the BSE Sensex and NSE Nifty hit record highs. The numbers on the screen suggest a boom. But these record highs are concealing more than they reveal.
This is, statistically, one of the narrowest rallies we have ever seen. Beneath the headline numbers, the carnage is severe. Since the previous peak in September 2024—some 14 months ago—very few individual investors have actually made money. The index is being propped up by a handful of heavyweights while the broader market languishes. It is a mirage of prosperity.
As a recent ET article pointed out, almost half of Nifty50 stocks haven't even touched their all-time highs this year, exposing a dangerously narrow rally propped up by a handful of largecap heavyweights.
And let’s look at the big names.
TCS is down 23%. Wipro, Tech Mahindra, Power Grid, Infosys, IndusInd Bank, HCL Tech, and Dr Reddy's are all stuck in double-digit losses for 2025— even as the Sensex and Nifty post 10% gains this calendar year.
Altogether, 23 Nifty stocks are languishing at least 10% below their all-time highs.
This brings us to the central paradox of modern investing. If the math proves that timing the market is next to impossible; and missing a handful of days can destroy your compounding, why do we listen to the cacophony of self-styled gurus who relentlessly predict the next big swing?
Greed Is Good: Is It?
The answer lies in the collision of technology and ancient human greed.
In the early 1990s, India saw the rise of Harshad Mehta, a stockbroker who assumed the role of a Pied Piper, leading both small and large investors into a frenzy that ended in ruin for most.
Mehta was the proto-influencer. He ruled the narrative before the internet, before Twitter, or the gamification of finance.
Today, the spirit of Mehta has been fractured and multiplied across thousands of YouTube channels and Telegram groups.
Financial advice now flows freely from unqualified individuals whose primary skill is not equity research, but storytelling. They are aided by brokerages that have built admirable, slick mobile apps designed to make losing your life savings feel like a video game.
Advisors Versus AppsInvesting is not a game. It is a discipline of emotional regulation. This is why the unglamorous Mutual Fund manager remains relevant. Their job is not to be a hero, but to be a robot: to research themes, to buy without euphoria, and sell without panic.
Indian investors have, to their credit, shown a degree of collective wisdom by pouring savings into Mutual Funds via Systematic Investment Plans (SIPs). This steady drip of capital has shown resilience. But one has to wonder if this discipline will hold when the narrative turns sour, or if the temptation to ‘time’ the exit will take over.
The market is beckoning with record highs, usually the time when a fresh crop of investors jump in.
But unless you possess the professional fortitude to endure the boredom of long-term holding, or the skill to navigate a market that is rising in name only, you are walking into a trap.
As we look toward a year where indices may hit a few more milestones, remember the math. The market doesn't care about you. And, if you are taking your cues from an app rather than an advisor, you aren't investing—you're just gambling on the hope that you won't miss those 30 crucial days.
