The cost of waiting

Summary: Many investors try to improve returns by waiting for market corrections, but data shows this instinct often backfires. Sensex evidence highlights that time in the market matters far more than timing it, as delayed investing quietly destroys compounding. Index investing is often presented as the simplest way to build wealth. Buy the market, stay invested and let compounding do the heavy lifting. Yet, even investors who consciously choose indices frequently fail to earn index-like returns. The reason has little to do with the product and everything to do with behaviour. Markets fluctuate and investors react. They wait for better prices, pause investments during uncertain phases or look for the ‘right’ opportunity to deploy money. These actions feel sensible, even prudent. But over time, they tend to work against investors. Two sets of data from the Sensex make this point clear. The first dataset looks at rolling returns of the Sensex over the past two decades. Instead of calendar-year returns, rolling returns capture what investors actually experience – entering and exiting the market at different points. The pattern is straightforward. Over one-year periods, the Sensex delivered negative returns roughly a quarter of the time

This article was originally published on February 01, 2026.