---
title: "That 9X return from Nifty Midcap is irrelevant if you couldn't survive the 73% of time it was in drawdown"
slug: that-9x-return-from-nifty-midcap-is-irrelevant-if-you-couldn-t-survive-the-73-of-time-it-was-in-dra
date_published: 2025-06-22T05:17:00.179Z
original_url: https://www.tigzig.com/post/that-9x-return-from-nifty-midcap-is-irrelevant-if-you-couldn-t-survive-the-73-of-time-it-was-in-dra
source: migrated
processed_at: 2025-12-03T13:30:00.000Z
---

# That 9X return from Nifty Midcap is irrelevant if you couldn't survive the 73% of time it was in drawdown

I analyzed 18 years of data for three iconic Indian investments: the Nifty 50, L&T, and the Nifty Midcap 100.

The results on paper are spectacular. But they hide a brutal psychological truth.

I designed the Anxiety Index to quantify the psychological impact. An index of 73% means you spent 73% of your holding period watching your investment sit below a previous peak (exact definitions at the end)

* To earn that 9X in midcaps, you had to endure a 73% Anxiety (Index)
* For L&T's impressive 7X growth, the price was a 75% Anxiety (Index), including a single drawdown that lasted 2,377 days.

Let that sink in. 6.5 years watching your investment be worth less than it was before. Even the 'safer' Nifty 50 spent 63% of the time in a drawdown.

Your biggest risk isn't a number on a spreadsheet. It's your own behavior in the face of a prolonged, gut-wrenching drawdown.

Your financial plan is irrelevant if you don't have the conviction to execute it when you are in depths of a bear market

Before you chase the next 10X idea, ask yourself:

* Do I have the temperament to go nowhere for 5+ years?
* Is my financial life structured to survive needing money at the worst possible time?
* Is my asset allocation built for my psychology, not just for a model?

Past performance is no guarantee of future results. But it is a hell of a teacher about the price of returns.

Quantify the psychological price of your own investments. I built TIGZIG Quants for this analysis - it's free. Analyze any stock, metal, or crypto across your chosen time window.

---

**P.S.**

Drawdown measures the fall from an asset's most recent peak. You can be profitable overall but still be in a 20% drawdown. Anxiety Index is my metric for quantifying the psychological cost of watching your portfolio drop from a peak and waiting for it to recover. It is calculated by summing the days of most significant drawdown periods (I take the worst seven) and expressing this as a percentage of the total time.

This is not investment advice. I'm a CA, data scientist, ex-trader and long time investor building tools for my own research. The code is open-source.