Beware: Can midcap stocks see a repeat of the 2017 crash?

livemint.com:

first investing lessons. Well, for a young stock market enthusiast like me, I couldn't quite relate to this. I mean, in the stock market or as a matter of fact anything in life, timing plays a key role.

Another thing which veterans told us which is a continuation of the above adage is. 'Time in the Market is more important than Timing the Market'. Now I completely agree with this.

I did some data crunching on the whole idea of buying stocks at the peak vs buying stocks at the bottom and then calculating their long-term returns. Let's take the example of two investors, A and Investor B. Investor A started his Systematic Investment Plan (SIP) in Nifty at the bottom of 2008 crash.

This is when there was a flash sale and things were available at throw away prices. After all, the narrative is that the global financial system had collapsed and will fireball in to Armageddon. Investor B for whatever reasons best known to him, started his Systematic Investment Plan at the peak of the 2008 bubble (end of 2007).

This was when infrastructure and real estate companies were trading at a P/B multiple of 8-10 times. In fact, the same infrastructure and real estate companies were available at their book values a couple of years ago. Such was the hysteria before the crash.

Fast forward 10 years to 2018... If you were to take a guess, I am sure the answer would be, investor A who started his SIP at lows would have outperformed investor B? Well, the difference in Nifty returns of both investors was hardly 1%. In the end, investing every month for a consistent period of 10 years humbles even the mistake of investing at the peak.

At the end of the day, stocks and indices always revert to mean. However, there is a catch here... The key word