At the India Economic Summit 2025 panel discussion on “The New India Tradebook” on Friday, Helios Capital India CEO & CIO Dinshaw Irani and JM Financial Managing Director Ashu Madan tackled two evergreen investor questions: Is long-term investing a myth and when should one actually redeem?

Long-Term Investing Isn’t Passive - It’s Active Portfolio Churn

Dinshaw Irani challenged the popular notion of “buy and forget” investing. He argued that the continuous, skillful management of a portfolio, as evidenced by rising Net Asset Values (NAV), negates the need for a premature exit.

"If you see your manager doing it regularly with a NAV upgrade, I think you never need to withdraw your money from there."

Irani explained that in a mutual fund, the manager constantly performs churn, i.e., selling stocks deemed expensive or underperforming and acquiring newer, underpriced stocks with a pending growth story.

"He's selling out the ones which he thinks are expensive or which have overdone themselves or which where he's made a mistake. He's getting into newer stocks, which he believes are underpriced..."

This continuous, professional rebalancing ensures the portfolio remains dynamic and focused on growth, acting as a relay race rather than a single marathon run for every stock.

"An individual stock can disappoint you, but a portfolio managed properly cannot... But in a relay fashion, obviously, there'll be some set of leaders which will try out at some point in time. But you need to have the second set ready to take over the baton..."

When Should You Actually Redeem?

Ashu Madan, MD of JM Financial, addressed the withdrawal question by advocating for a pyramid investing approach, a disciplined strategy that runs contrary to typical investor behaviour.

"I believe in a pyramid kind of investing... when to withdraw the money, when the markets are down and out, when nobody's interested in that... That's where you should invest the maximum."

Madan noted the danger of the "reverse pyramid" where investors start small and increase their investment at the peak of market euphoria, citing current data: "61% of stocks listed have given negative returns till, I mean, last year, despite hitting new highs."

His core advice is to "stay invested forever," but with a key discipline: "keep turning the size of your portfolio." This implies reducing exposure during market highs (euphoria) and increasing it during market lows (distress).

Bottomline

Long-term investing works when the underlying portfolio is actively managed with disciplined churn. Retail investors rarely need to redeem entirely; they need to control position sizing through market cycles using the pyramid approach.

(The India Economic Summit 2025 is proudly presented by TVS Motor Company. This event is Co-Powered by Adani Group, and Nippon India Mutual Fund, whilst being held in association with Ravin Group, Bhutani Infra and ProstarM. The special partner for this summit is Engineers India Limited (EIL), and the state partner is the Haryana Government.)