If you’ve entered the markets in the past four or five years, the recent correction is probably your first real test. It doesn’t feel like a correction when you’re living through it, it feels personal. Portfolios that were up 30% are now flat. Names that were “consensus buys”six months ago are down 40%. The instinct to exit, wait for clarity, and re-enter “when things settle” feels rational.

But here’s what two decades of managing capital has taught me: the cost of that clarity is almost always the return itself.

Cycles are Inevitable. Timing them isn’t.

Markets don’t move in straight lines. Neither does wealth creation. The Nifty has delivered roughly 12-14% CAGR over the long term, but those returns don’t arrive evenly. They come in bursts, often in windows so short that missing them changes everything.

A study by JP Morgan Asset Management found that missing just the 10 best trading days in the market over a 20-year period reduces your returns by half. The problem? Seven of those best days typically occur within two weeks of the worst days. So if you exit during a downturn to “avoid further pain”,you’re statistically likely to miss the recovery that follows.

This isn’t a theory. It’s a pattern. And it repeats across every major correction, be it 2008, 2013, 2016, Covid, and now.

The Real Risk isn’t Volatility. It’s Inaction.

Most investors treat volatility as risk. But volatility is just price movement. It’s temporary, emotional, and cyclical. The real risk is permanent capital loss, which happens when you sell a fundamentally sound business at depressed prices because you couldn’t stomach the interim drawdown.

We’ve seen this play out repeatedly. Investors who stayed through Covid, Russia-Ukraine, and multiple sectoral corrections have portfolios that are multiples of their initial capital today. Those who exited during the fear and waited for “the right time”either never re-entered or came back at much higher levels, effectively locking in losses and missing recoveries.

The difference wasn’t luck. It was endurance.

India’s Structural Story Hasn’t Changed

Right now, the narrative is dominated by FPI outflows, currency pressure, and muted earnings in select pockets. But zoom out, and India’s fundamentals remain intact (arguably stronger than they’ve been in years).

Capacity utilisationis at multi-year highs. Private capex is expanding. Manufacturing PMI continues to show growth. The government’s PLI schemes, infrastructure push, and focus on self-reliance are creating multi-year tailwinds for sectors like defence, electronics, chemicals, and capital goods.

Portfolios should be positioned in these themes. Businesses that benefit from India’s manufacturing renaissance, not fleeting momentum trades. Yes, they’re volatile. Yes, sentiment has turned negative. But the underlying order books, capacity additions, and revenue visibility haven’t disappeared. They’re just being mispriced.

And that’s where patient capital wins.

Compounding Needs Time, Not Timing

Warren Buffett didn’t become Warren Buffett by dodging every correction. He became Warren Buffett by staying invested through them. Compounding works not because you avoid volatility, but because you survive it.

Consider this: ₹10 lakh invested in the Nifty50 in 2000 would be worth roughly ₹1.3 crore today, assuming you stayed fully invested. But if you tried to time the market and missed just the best 30 days over that 25-year period, your portfolio would be worth less than ₹30 lakh. That’s the cost of “waiting for the right time”.

The math is unforgiving. Time in the market beats timing the market. Treat this not as a slogan, but as an arithmetic reality.

What Staying Invested Really Means

Staying invested doesn’t mean being passive. It means being disciplined. It means distinguishing between noise and signal. It means asking the right question during corrections: Has the business thesis broken, or has only the price changed?

If the thesis is intact (strong balance sheet, defensible moat, clear earnings visibility) then a price correction is an opportunity to average down, not an invitation to exit. If the thesis has broken, exit without ego. But don’t confuse a broken thesis with a broken mood.

The Hardest Part of Investing is Doing Nothing

The irony of wealth creation is that the most profitable action often feels like inaction. Sitting through a 20% drawdown while headlines scream crisis takes more courage than buying at the bottom. Because the bottom only becomes obvious in hindsight.

But that's the game. Markets reward endurance, not intelligence. They reward the process, not prediction. And they reward those who understand that cycles are temporary, but compounding is permanent.

So if you’re questioning whether to stay invested, ask yourself this: Has India’s growth story changed? Have the businesses you own lost their competitive edge? Or has only sentiment shifted?

If it’s the latter, the answer is simple. Stay the course. Let time do its work. Because as history has proven again and again, those who stay invested through the cycle end up owning the returns beyond it.

(The author is CEO & Co-founder, Green Portfolio. Views are personal.)