Thursday, March 4, 2010

Market Timing

What I'm gradually coming to realize is that market timing is not worth the effort. I think it can be if you make it a full-time job, but more often than not even then it's a waste of time. There doesn't seem to be much evidence to support the financial merit of daytrading and trying to jump in and out of markets. I think the best thing to do for people in their twenties and thirties is to accumulate assets of varying degrees of risk and volatility. From there, you wait until closer to retirement age and begin to manage those assets, drawing from riskier and more volatile assets and/or reallocating them into more conservative vehicles. That's all I've got for this post. But I think the current state of the economy and the near to long-term future will only prove this point further. That being said, if you see a company or type of investment that looks too good to pass up on, maybe just accumulate more of that and less of something else.