Track record

From past prices

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Buying at once, waiting, or buying in stages

The main test. For each stretch, ₹1 invested three ways and valued two years after the stretch began: all on the first day; all when the watch alert fired (or after a year, if it never did); or a third at each reference level as it was reached (the rest after a year).

In a mostly rising market, buying at once came out ahead on the typical stretch. Waiting did not improve returns; buying in stages gave the smallest falls and the least time below the money put in, at the cost of upside. In 2024, the one falling year, buying in stages lost least.

How long stretches lasted, and how they cooled

Every stretch among the 500 most traded, from the day its score reached 70 (where the watch alert arms) to its first score below 40. Stretches still going at the cutoff count until then; that is what the method used here, Kaplan–Meier, is for.

Stretches that begin in the same month share the same market moves, so the thousands of stretches are closer to a few dozen independent months. These ranges resample whole months to show how much each figure could plausibly move. A range that includes zero means a difference could be nothing.

The levels ladder

For each alert: how often it was reached within a year of the stretch beginning, where the price was when it was, and how much further prices fell afterwards (the median worst fall in the two years after).

Deeper levels mean a lower price when they are reached, but they are reached less often, and prices typically kept falling for a while afterwards. No level protected against further falls.

Volume when a stretch began

Stretches split into thirds by volume on the day they began: the average of the previous 20 trading days, against the stock’s usual daily volume over the year before.

Heavier volume came with rougher rides, in a steady order: deeper dips, deeper falls and worse bad cases. It did not change whether waiting helped. Heavy-volume runs often follow news, and overlap with the strongest recent winners, so volume may partly measure the same thing.

Delivery % when a stretch began

NSE stocks only. Stretches split into thirds by how the stock’s delivery % over the previous 20 trading days compared with its own usual level over the year before: rising, about the same, or falling.

Rising delivery came with milder rides, in a steady order: smaller dips and falls, milder bad cases and better returns; falling delivery with the roughest. It did not tell when a dip would come. A plausible reading is that rising delivery means more buyers taking shares to hold, while falling delivery means more same-day trading. It probably overlaps with the volume finding above.

How deep the dips went

Share of stretches by their deepest dip within a year, measured from the day the stock first reached 80.

Month by month

The median dip within a year, for stretches that began each month. Lighter bars are stretches still inside their first year: their dip so far can only deepen, so those bars are a floor, not a final figure.

Year by year

A year marked “so far” still has stretches inside their first year, so its figures will change. Falls sat through need two years after a purchase.

The forward record

Written down each evening, before anyone knows what happens next: every stock among the 500 most traded that first reaches a stretch score of 80 is logged with its price, then followed for a year. Results appear as entries reach 3, 6 and 12 months.

How this is measured

• Which stocks: the 500 most traded NSE stocks at the time, by median daily traded value over the previous six months.
• The start of a stretch: the first session a stock’s stretch score reaches 80, ranked against at least three years of its own history. One entry per stretch.
• The dip: the lowest price in the following year, against that day’s close.
• The alert price: the close on the day the watch alert fired, if it fired within a year.
• Falls sat through: the lowest close in the two years after a purchase, against the purchase price, for buying on the first day and for buying when the alert fired.
• Never cooled off: no watch alert within a year.

Limits

• Stocks that were delisted or merged are missing from the history, which makes every figure look better than it was.
• Many stretches happen together, in the same market moves, so there are fewer independent cases than the counts suggest.
• The history covers a period in which Indian stocks mostly rose. Other markets may behave differently.
• We also checked whether a stock’s relative strength when a stretch began (its past year against the 500 most traded) changed how deep the dip went. Stretched leaders dipped deeper, not less: a median of about 18% within a year, against about 14% for the middle third.
• We also checked buying when a stock first became washed out (a score of 15 or below). It was the worst starting point we tested: a median further dip of about 31% within a year, the deepest falls, and a median two-year return of about 9%, against about 23% for an ordinary day. Missing delisted companies flatter this group most.
• Past behaviour does not predict what a stock will do next.

What this does not say

None of this suggests what to buy, sell or hold, or when. A dip after a stretch is not a reason to buy, and an alert is not a signal. Sensifty describes prices; decisions are yours. Waiting has a cost too: some stretches never cool off within a year, and the record shows how often.