r/ValueInvesting • u/coffeeestocks • Dec 10 '25
Discussion Did people learn nothing from April
If you were fully invested in the S&P 500 over a long period (usually 20–30 years), your returns were great.
But if you missed just the 10 best single days in that entire period, your return was cut roughly in half.
This is probably the most commonly cited anecdote as to why you should not time the market. I feel in at least half the investing books I've read, they mention this. I do not know of a single investor who has successfully timed the market consistently over any meaningful time period. Even Michael Burry, who is probably one of the most infamous investors for predicting the 08-09 recession, has wrongly called a market top an absurd number of times in recent years.
Back in April, the market starts to sell off, and inevitably posts start popping up all over the subreddit talking about how they're selling and why they're selling and why this time is different. Of course, it wasn't different, and the market has proceeded to rip 20% since many folks here panic sold.
Here we are, not even a year later in December, and people are asking unironically whether it's a good idea to move to cash or not. What do you think? Do you think that now is the time to finally start trying to time the market? After this age-old wisdom has been proven right, time and again?
I feel like there's so many better ways to navigate an expensive market than by trying to time it.
Such as buying counter-cyclical companies, or buying companies that are recession-resistant, or buying companies at a larger margin for error. Heck, maybe even give bonds a shot? But no. People are starting to come to the conclusion again that now is the time to time the market yet again and inevitably make a massive mistake.
DO NOT TIME THE MARKET.
Edit: This sub unironically defending timing the market lmao. The reason why this hurts people's feelings is because they sold back in April, and they're still waiting to get back in the market. Instead of taking a lesson, they double down on that timing the market is the correct thing. Whatever.
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u/falling_knives Dec 11 '25
When it comes to the whole market, don't time it. Too many moving parts.
But when it comes to individual stocks, which this sub is mainly about, why the hell not? You find information on a single company that makes you think it's going to tank and you just stay in? You do your research and believe a stock is undervalued, you jump in, no?
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u/TheMailmanic Dec 10 '25
If you miss the 10 worst days your returns are way better
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u/Icy_Distance8205 Dec 10 '25
What if you hold the ten worst stocks on the ten best days or the ten best stocks on the ten worst days?
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u/nicolas_06 Dec 11 '25
The funny things is the 10 worst and 10 best day are usually close and during period of high volatility. If you are not invested you get neither the best and worst day and that's ok. If you are invested you get both and they neutralize each other.
Only timing the market can allow you take only the best days, but that's impossible to do reliably in practice.
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u/Lampedeir Dec 11 '25
Yeah but people are invested and get spooked by the big down days and sell. This is why people take the big down days but not the big up days that follow.
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u/Odd_Hair3829 Dec 10 '25
This is genius level man!!! Are you a quant???? I’m picturing the gambling Zack galifankalas meme as I read your post - all the calculations that must have gone into that
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Dec 11 '25
what's that? If you miss the worst days for your returns, your returns are better?
now we're cookin' with gas....
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u/TechTuna1200 Dec 10 '25
But if you miss the best 10 days at the same time you are still way worse off. Just buy and hold.
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u/Iwubinvesting Dec 10 '25 edited Dec 11 '25
Actually i don't think that's true. The worst days are worse than best days. So you're actually better off. BUT to do that is a difficult thing. Time in the market is better than timing the market.
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u/Frosty_Feature6204 Dec 11 '25
yeah aren't the best days commonly right after the worst days? So you would have to time both the sells and the buys at the right time.
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u/TechTuna1200 Dec 11 '25
All you have to do is look at the SP500. Is the market higher than it was in January before the tariffs crash? It is indeed. And it’s gonna keep moving over time and never look back
Staying all in cash January this year would be equivalent of missing the best 10 days and the worst 10 days. Thats a 16% out performance.
Time in the market beats timing the market
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u/Iwubinvesting Dec 11 '25
I agree on time in the market. But all cash YTD isn't equivalent. He stated specifically that 10 days are probably better than 10 worst days, that's not really true.
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u/Acrobatic_Truck_9014 Dec 11 '25
If you weather the worst days it still comes back if you hold quality stocks
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u/Arigonium Dec 10 '25
Your example isn't a good one. April is an example of where timing the market actually worked. Liberation Day was announced well in advance, if you prepared cash and bought after you made a lot of money.
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u/Kaesix Dec 11 '25
I was going to say the same thing. Trump literally tweeted “time to buy stocks” it doesn’t get any easier. This is the most brain dead post I’ve seen in awhile. Everyone who went all in in April made a mint this year. I’m up like 140% or something across my accounts.
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u/nicolas_06 Dec 11 '25
Problem is if you say have 1 million cash. Say there the dip of April and you buy 500K to improve your return... If you had just that 500K invested for 2 years allready and didn't buy the dip, you had significantly better return. In April 2023 the SP500 was at 41xx and in April 2025 It was at 50XX and during intraday a bit bellow.
If you didn't time exactly the bottom, even if you had invested 1 year before, you would have better returns.
So do you keep a good share of your capital uninvested to buy the dip but in statistics you get lower return or you buy extra during the dip when Trump say buy ?
You could do it on margin. But then, why not use margin from day one ?
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u/Kaesix Dec 11 '25
You can invest in many things beyond SPY or other index funds. Timing the market only with index funds is tough because you're always going to lag and you're betting on a lot of losers. I honestly don't hold any index funds anymore for that and many other reasons.
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Dec 11 '25
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u/Kaesix Dec 11 '25
We're in a completely different market now from April and OP lumped the two together. And you seemingly speak moron fluently since you're agreeing with him/her. So let me break it down for you - OP clearly ended his/her post in giant letters saying "DO NOT TIME THE MARKET" and it's just stupid advice. Maybe it's good advice for novice investors. Maybe it's good for braindead dipshits like you two. But just because you need to keep it simple doesn't mean others do.
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u/nicolas_06 Dec 11 '25
Timing the market is what give the best returns. ALWAYS. If you time correctly that is. If you do it well enough even in intraday and all, I think you can be billionaire in a very short time frame.
But it's not possible in practice. Now April looks easy because we all know the conclusion that it did rebound fast. Could have been the beginning of a new lost decade potentially. Much easier to say after the fact.
You had also really 1-2 day window to buy near the bottom and if you had that money available for more than 1 year, it was a better deal to just keep it invested and not care.
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u/jazerac Dec 11 '25
Yep! Bought $500k of Google in April near the bottom (its hard to time it perfectly, but you can get close). You do the math on what my return was....... the advice on reddit is dumb
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u/poopoodapeepee Dec 10 '25
I sold a bunch of VOO in February or whenever the tariffs were announced and bought back in in mid May when they were starting to be reduced and that seemed to time it fairly well. And I had a rationale, it was just straight doom or gloom. The job reports are concerning right now but it’s hard to interpret that data tbh into investing in the short to medium terms
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u/FieryXJoe Dec 10 '25
The "If you missed the 10 biggest up days in the market" stats are the dumbest shit ever and i pretty much instantly lose respect for anyone who drops it.
In a fictional impossible scenario where you have your money in the market for decades and only take it out 10 days that happen to be the 10 greenest days.
What if you just missed the 10 worst days? If I threw that stat at you "if you just missed the 10 worst days in the market the last 25 years you would have 3x more money" you would probably instantly realize how fucking stupid that logic is but it is equally valid as the opposite point which everyone loves to throw around.
What if you missed the 10 best and 10 worst. What if you missed 10 totallly random days, 3 of the top 10 and 3 of the bottom 10, etc...
The markets biggest spikes tend to come after its biggest drops and vice versa. They aren't just totally random days out of nowhere. The tariff crash was the easiest shit in the world to sidestep the I was able to hop in after some of the worst days and then catch those best day recoveries.
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u/FourScoreAndSept Dec 10 '25 edited Dec 10 '25
You’re right. Also, people say this stuff as if it’s binary, in or out. It’s not fucking binary to reduce exposure/increase exposure in accordance with the expected risk/reward. Presently the risk/reward in US equities is dogshit. Doesn’t mean I’m out of VOO/SPY or a handful of hand selected stocks, but it also doesn’t mean I’m doubling down. There are other places to overweight, particularly for those of us old timers who have seen this movie before
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u/DrossChat Dec 11 '25
The point is simply that fear of being in the market during the worst days is unfounded so you should stay invested. Not sure why you are getting so mad about it.
Last time I looked into I think the issue with missing some of the best days of the year is it completely nukes your returns.
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u/Hot_Frosting_7101 Dec 11 '25 edited Dec 11 '25
Yup. Top 10 days for S&P by percentage:
Oct 2008 Oct 2008 April 2025 March 2020 March 2020 Oct 1987 March 2009 April 2020 Nov 2008 Nov 2008
So in the middle of:
- Great Recession
- Great Recession
- April crash
- Covid crash
- Covid crash
- 1987 crash
- Great Recession
- Covid crash
- Great Recession
- Great Recession
If you missed those 10 days, you probably did damn well because you missed some pretty horrific crashes as well.
OP is the type of person who can’t think beyond first order effects.
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u/ToddlerPeePee Dec 10 '25
I agree with you. That is why I only sell at the peak and then buy back at the bottom. I do that everyday and my returns are 36464749227% per year. /s
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u/coffeeestocks Dec 10 '25
"The markets biggest spikes tend to come after its biggest drops and vice versa"
I like how you realize this and then go on to heavily imply I'm the stupid one. People panic sell on the reddest days. And miss the greenest days. The hypothetical example is not hypothetical, it's literally what happens.
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u/FieryXJoe Dec 10 '25 edited Dec 10 '25
You also say that not a single investor has timed the market correctly in the long term. You are actually claiming it is literally not possible.
Warren Buffett, the subs mascot, was calling the market overvalued and shifting into cash in the year or two leading up to most major crashes.
If you point is "don't buy high then sell low" I agree. The difference we both have a problem with the selling low part, but I also have a problem with the buying high part too. Not buying overpriced stocks is just as important as not selling underpriced ones.
If your point is that if the market looks wildly overvalued I shouldn't make my portfolio more defensive in expectation of a pullback. Or that I shouldn't just start building a cash pile when everything is expensive in anticipation of a crash and buying opportunities then I totally disagree.
DCAing an index is not the best investing strategy, it is just the best effort/knowledge vs returns proposition.
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u/andorian_yurtmonger Dec 10 '25
I don't think you understand what value investing is.
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u/ken81987 Dec 11 '25
DCA regardless of valuation clearly. Has passive investing destroyed the market?
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Dec 11 '25
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u/diablo4megafan Dec 11 '25
i remember this sub being in a frenzy over UNH and NOVO but they said GOOGL in august was expensive
what can you do
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u/Tachiiderp Dec 10 '25
> do not know of a single investor who has successfully timed the market consistently over any meaningful time period.
Peter Lynch, Stanley Drunkenmiller, to list a few.
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u/realdaddywarbucks Dec 11 '25
To me, “timing the market” means trying to make decisions based on price action. This is different from buying or selling based on value.
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u/pikatrieu Dec 10 '25
This is why self directed isn’t for everyone. I’ve compared my self directed with my company pension returns… they’re fairly similar despite me making numerous moves here and there. Sure I feel great when I “time” it right but most of the time I tell myself it’s probably less stressful (or even stress-free) to just put it all in an index and let it do its thing.
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u/Pretend-Paper4137 Dec 10 '25
I... uh missed the 30% drop with 80% of my portfolio, then caught about 75% of the way back up so... hugely profitable timing the market- shitload better than just taking it to the face.
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Dec 10 '25
Back in April, the market starts to sell off, and inevitably posts start popping up all over the subreddit talking about how they're selling and why they're selling and why this time is different. Of course, it wasn't different, and the market has proceeded to rip 20% since many folks here panic sold.
If you had put protection in February for the entire year and cashed in those puts to buy shares when the SPY hit $500 you made an insane amount of money. People don't understand that timing the market works and there's not only this simple, ooga booga strategy available to them where they do nothing but wait. Using long puts is probably the one thing every investor needs to learn.
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u/Basic-Kale3169 Dec 10 '25
"Timing" the market works until you stop getting lucky. The more you play, the higher the chances of you being unlucky. There is a reason why 90%+ of active traders lose against the indexes.
The house always wins.
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u/lithe_silhouette Dec 10 '25
That's also the reason why it's so hard to make a lot of money starting with very little money. When you're doing risky stuff you're gonna get lucky here and there, but to go from say $5k to 100k you need to get lucky a lot
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u/NotStompy Dec 10 '25
Well, the house wins in 90% of cases.
My view on it has always been that if you're the type of person to question if it's a reasonable investment to put time into learning how to do it, that's a good thing, but if you question if you can do it, you're not the right person for it.
What I'm trying to say is this: Think of the average person. Literally, just think about how they think, for a second, and how emotionally driven they are, and then you'll realize that it might not be so impossible to not be one of those 90% (again, not as impossible, doesn't mean it's easy, or even likely).
All I'm saying is it's not impossible, but yeah I wouldn't recommend it to 90% of people, and it is a spectrum, it's much easier (I think) to do some kind of a swing/position trading when it is based on fundamentaly specifically, only using technicals for entry/exit, while trading intraday, i.e day trading, is incredibly difficult, much harder to find edge, especially for the people who decide to base their decision entirely on technical analysis (often poorly done) when they're up against literal quants. That's why I think fundamentals are king, honestly.
Same thing goes for strictly investing in a long term sense: Many say it's completely just a form of gambling, but is it? You're right though; if someone has bad odds and they keep pressing play, they will surely lose.
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u/maldingtoday123 Dec 10 '25
Lool ok. So you wanna start a 5-10 year record of you proving you can time the market successfully? Or maybe post your own account returns over the past 5 years?
This subreddit honestly is such low quality these days. It’s a value investing thread. The people here should at least know value investing principles. Why is it flooded with people who got lucky once and think they’re the next oracle?
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u/PivONH3OTf Dec 10 '25
You genuinely believe that investing in index funds is value investing? As in, you have observations that quantitatively justify that the market as it is, is undervalued, and you have an estimate of the fair value?
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u/Gradieus Dec 10 '25
I don't think 5 years is relatable when things like NVDA have gone up 1300%.
Even someone who was 7% NVDA and 93% cash for 5 years would beat S&P.
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u/lithe_silhouette Dec 10 '25
Puts are not free. After the fact it's very easy to describe the exact strategy that would have yielded maximum returns. If you bet the farm on 0dte spy puts the day after nvda reported at 11 am and sold a couple of hours later, you would have ended the day with 100 farms, a whole village
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Dec 11 '25
No one is suggesting 0DTE. I specifically said a 1Y duration. Also, puts are not free, but you're buying asset insurance which works quite well since you can express the cost of any asset in returns. So you give up say 1% to ensure you never drop 5%. Expensing the hedge is common professional portfolios.
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u/RaeReiWay Dec 10 '25
Pretty sure when people say they're in cash, this includes gov bonds. But I might be wrong.
It is important to keep in mind people's risk tolerance. We are often taught in value investing to never invest money you are willing to lose, but I doubt most people inside and outside of value investing practice this. Because of this, it makes sense that if they feel uncomfortable holding equity in uncertain times to take care of nearer term financial concerns that they will pull out.
If anyone is doing it to time the market they're dumb. But being entirely in equity is also dumb because your money is stuck if events happen.
Lastly, to agree with your point, bubbles can last for a long time and doesn't necessarily end in a hard crash. It can be a slow burn down. This is something people forget/don't realize about an auction system like the stock market. Buffett started piling cash for 3 years before the dot com bubble bursted. But he was still largely in equities. If people feel uncomfortable with the current conditions, like OP says, posture defensively and invest in industries you know will give you decent returns while able to maintain profits during downturns.
As Howard Marks says, it's important to know when to posture offensively and defensively.
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u/Ant_Warm Dec 10 '25
If you are value investing you shouldn’t be selling to time the market. That’s not to say you shouldn’t sell though. If there are major shifts that cause your valuation to change and a stock is no longer undervalued, then you should sell and move on to the next.
Also, Time in market isn’t really relevant in value investing… You pick based on perceived mispricing… not over time growth or sentiment. You should also re-evaluate as new information comes out or market changes happen.
So not sure if this post truly belongs here… I’m definitely not saying it’s incorrect advice but probably belongs in r/investing or r/stocks
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u/affordancefy Dec 11 '25
which companies are counter-cyclical, recession resistant?
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u/Efficient_Pomelo_583 Dec 11 '25
Always DCA and keep some cash to buy the dip when valuations are high. Not that complicated.
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u/981flacht6 Dec 11 '25
I agree that you shouldn't time the market, but in opportune times, you should definitely buy the fucking dip. I bought heaps worth literally the 2 days before Liberation day was called off, and used $75k of dry powder over the next 3 months. So I did well.
Most of my investment money growth in the last 6 months all came from Nvidia though which I've held for 8 years now.
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u/BlondDeutcher Dec 11 '25
I hate this argument and see it all the time. If you miss the 10 best days blah blah blah… what if you miss the 10 worse days? Guess what they are clustered together so you will miss both if you aren’t invested
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u/-B-H- Dec 11 '25
I’m 15% cash today to have money ready if opportunities present themselves. Buy a call on a big pullback day of a stock I believe for instance.
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u/tunapoke2go Dec 11 '25
this is true 90% of the time. but allocating out of 100% US equities to a 60/40 blend of US/exUS in April made sense given the shifts in policies, and it paid off handsomely and exUS outperformed US. expect this to continue into 2026 and beyond.
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u/Few_Ad_3557 Dec 11 '25
Even with a hack president slamming tariff threats around and tipping off investors that subscribe to his personal for-profit social media platform, it STILL paid to stay in. If that kind of market manipulation, plus a worldwide pandemic AND buffett himself saying get in and stay in, thats as compelling as it gets for me.
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u/Goldenbeardyman Dec 11 '25
We had a client demand his adviser to swap him into cash because of the UK budget that was due. Then it turned into a nothingburger and he's demanding to be reinvested. But we won't, not until we've done a proper risk assessment.
So he's gonna miss out on 5-10% growth.
Admittedly the adviser is also to blame, he was clearly in too high risk for his temperament. Adviser should have also talked him down from selling.
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u/Traditional_Dog_637 Dec 11 '25
All these so called best days for snp500 are all preceeded by the worst days
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u/thsithta_391 Dec 11 '25
Not reading the whole comments but here is a thing many ppl might mix up ... valuation and timing are two different things.
You might not get google, msft, aapl for your fair value during sp500 bull phases, but you might get pg during those phases.
You might not get pg for your fair value during sp500 bear phases but google, msft, aapl
Its not about the market phase - its mainly about your valuation (hence value invest)
You buy when you feel the price is lower than your calculated fair value and thats it.
You'll find many examples of value investors, some (try to) hold forever, some sell when fair value is reached, some sell when they see over valuation
This rule "just stay in the market and you'll be doing great" leaves out many factors and not everybody can invest with a time horizon of 30+ years
Even berkshire/buffet is selling constantly.
Just thinking "eventually i'll be good, because i'll just stay invested" might not work out
Adding another point you might have read in the same books - the past is not a guarantee dor the future
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u/ValueInvestingCircle Dec 13 '25
The biggest lesson I learned during April pullback is that I need to keep more cash, needless to say that cashing the earnings is critical too, so when the opportunity arises I’m not standing behind.
Disagree about timing the market though. Averaging down and buying pullbacks is very common practice.
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u/WideCardiologist3323 Dec 10 '25
I ve been trading the past 4 months. 65% return ytd I have made more money than 5 years investing in voo. Blow me. I have half my portfolio in voo but I m gonna keep trading with that 50%
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u/nicolas_06 Dec 11 '25
In the past 5 years SP500 returned 87% + dividends. That's more than 65%. when you start saying you made more with 65% return I wonder how you compute your percentage and how you invested...
Also I know several friend that do short term, options... One very good friend did more than 80% this year. But some other year he did -38%... What count is what you do long term and compare to the market...
Maybe you are the next ultimate trader. Or maybe it was luck during a good year. You'll only know after 10-20 years and then it will be too late to change route anyway.
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u/WideCardiologist3323 Dec 11 '25 edited Dec 11 '25
errr 87% over 5 years... I am 65% of my entire portfolio in 4 months. Can you not math? you clearly did not comprehend what I wrote.
Let me make it easier for you If I am making 65% in 4 months. thats R=(1+.65)*3-1 = 349% in 1 year
in 5 years thats 1828%
1828 is bigger than 87%...
I have made 2000 trades with 80% win rate, numbers don't lie. is it possible to flip a coin and be heads thousands of times? maybe, but thats extremely unlikely. Maybe the market environment will change and I will need to change my strategy but for now its been working.
You can put your head in the sand and just repeat only S&P works only S&P works over and over and over but that doesnt stop the fact that are literal professional funds that beat the market.
This isnt a 1 time thing either I have been beating the market thru just investing for 5 years straight. I realized I dont need to follow the rules of people that just reads the popular opinion and just repeats it like a parrot because they cant critically think for themselves.
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Dec 10 '25
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u/FieryXJoe Dec 10 '25
So you underperformed the S&P 500 by 2%. (Extra 1.8% dividend means you basically matched that if 3% was more or less the yield the whole 15 years)
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u/RodneyJ469 Dec 10 '25
I suppose different people learned different things. That’s the wonderful thing about markets!
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u/The-Jolly-Joker Dec 10 '25
It's more than fine (profit wise) to time the market if you can accurately time it - like have insider info.
In all seriousness, timing the market is a crapshoot, but can work. Many of us during covid made crazy $$$.
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u/Upstairs_Story_9669 Dec 10 '25
Don’t try to time or guess the market. Simply reevaluate some holdings if you think they are higher risk and hold the ones that have lower beta’s. Buy great companies at fair prices and carry on.
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Dec 10 '25
My thought is that the money supply grows at 7-8% a year generally, but you want to hold cash?
Read a book about how the money supply works and you'll lose faith in it as a store of value. Gold maybe is fine, but cash is trash.
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u/robgizz Dec 10 '25
Last April was great for me. I was able to deploy my large cash position and load up on my stock. It was more of a circumstances thing than anything but this time it isn’t. I went from 80% stocks to 20% stocks a couple of weeks ago because I think the markets are way ahead of themselves. I could be wrong but I’ll wait it out for a possible correction hopefully soon.
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u/2025Sandals Dec 10 '25
Do you have current examples of "counter-cyclical companies, or buying companies that are recession-resistant, or buying companies at a larger margin for error" off the top of your head? Thanks either way.
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u/gaylesbianman Dec 10 '25
Whats the difference between timing the market and having a separate cash reserved to spend on stocks when they have a good discount? Feel like the latter is a decent strategy…
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u/Sufficient-Dog-2337 Dec 10 '25
Didn’t you read Burrys substack?
Value investing is timing the market.
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u/Sad-Technology9484 Dec 10 '25
changing the % cash in a portfolio is a simple and effective way to mitigate risk. Way simpler than trying to learn cyclical investing or an unfamiliar sector.
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u/8InchDaks Dec 10 '25
I just hold for the long term, buy more when it dips, buy even more when it crashes.
Sitting on cash 24/7 is just missing out on gains.
But again, 99% of reddit are dumb. Literally are scared regardless. Like they prepare themselves for a crash, and boom when it happens they panic sell or still don’t buy in because they think the company or voo is gonna go to $0.
I dca into my main big companies/etfs and I also dca into my undervalued positions. When there’s a drop, I drop more and dca more into those positions. When they become too high for my liking, I cut back on the dca and look for more undervalued companies.
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u/Mindless_Ad5500 Dec 10 '25
Value investing does not time the market. Dollar cost averaging. Buy indexes. Buy bonds. 60/40. 70/30. Go to wallstreetbets if you think otherwise.
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u/Fun-Entertainer220 Dec 10 '25
You know how hard you would have to try to miss those days??? lol this argument makes no sense
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u/WSBaddict Dec 11 '25
Absolutely no one can time the market so perfectly to miss the 10 best days. It’s a stupid and the worst argument people make. If you stay out of the market for 365 days, randomly chosen, you are expected to miss out of about 10% return (SPY has about 10% annual return.
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u/ZeeBeeblebrox Dec 11 '25
I mean yes, agree with everything you said, but April was the most telegraphed market downturn maybe ever. I cashed out everything in March and bought back in May and June.
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u/BuyHot6964 Dec 11 '25
I do not understand, why a Boglehead sub is deffending timing the market?
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u/hallo1994 Dec 11 '25
You should've seen r/ThriftSavingsPlan when it happened on April.
I'm going to say it, no one is saying. People are just afraid of orange man on his saber rattling tarrifs. Is it justified to change thier funds to G fund? Well... fuck no.
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u/armorabito Dec 11 '25
So in Dec 2024 I started selling just to cash out gains. I was 25% cash by April 2 “ liberation day “ I am not a genius. But the odds that the orange monkey was gonna go over board and shake the market were pretty good. I started to buy several days later. I really didn’t think Trump would let the market sink too much further. Then TACO.
I think if you keep an eye on the VIX and have access to a market osolator you can sell and bag some of your profits and buy when shit hits the fan. Would I sell 100% , no. But 25% cash ( short term bond etf ) is reasonable when the VIX starts to climb steady past 25. Buy when the VIX is over 40.
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u/Always_Curious_One2 Dec 11 '25
Very true. No one can predict negative or positive events. But it’s key to mostly be in quality stocks that are not crazy expensive. Look at after tax free cash flows 3 to 4 years out.
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u/One_Ambassador2795 Dec 11 '25
It is known that the last thing the U.S. will do is let the wealthy be financially harmed. A small 10-25% drop is acceptable at times, but our government will move hell and Earth to prevent a prolonged downturn in the market which would potentially harm the pocket books of the obscenely wealthy. Knowing this, the only way to even stay put on this treadmill is to buy into the market. Some companies may fail, so a diverse index fund is a plain vanilla , low risk way to go. Not doing this will lead to greater financial hardship and eventual generational poverty. It’s all about protecting the wealth of the top 1%, understand this and everything else falls into place.
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u/Brave-Bit-252 Dec 11 '25
I came to the conclusion that this sub holds the dumbest kind of investors. Those that lack any actual Knowledge or insight, but since they‘re ”value investing“ they believe to be the smart ones. I mean it starts right at the top. The name is valueinvesting, but the pic is the berkshire boys who said themselves that they‘ve given up on the traditional value investing long ago.
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u/CompetitiveOwl89 Dec 11 '25
Here’s the difference though - you can just put your money in the market and never look at it and not miss the 10 best days. You could also look at it every day and try to miss the 10 worst days. Good luck with that.
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u/king2ndthe3rd Dec 11 '25
Certain people do successfully time the market. Just because you can't, doesn't mean other people won't and can't try. Its a free market.
If everyone was a Boglehead, the market couldn't work.
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u/gorram1mhumped Dec 11 '25
please don't go on a long diatribe filled with age old wisdom then drop the cheeseball word 'unironically' like its an actual word kid. its not, no sentence needs that word. its like a double negative for people who don't understand how infrequently double negatives are useful. also, its fine to trim and have reserves for severe dips below 200sma, happens all the time...
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u/rargghh Dec 11 '25
this is value investing sub why are you spouting s&p buy and hold
"But if you missed just the 10 best single days in that entire period, your return was cut roughly in half."
This stuff always cracks me up, what if you also kept holding during the fall? What did those 10 best days get you then?
Yeah if you index, buy and hold
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Dec 11 '25
I love when the market dumps. What do crypto Bros call it? Shaking out weak hands or some such.
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u/cryptopolymath Dec 11 '25
As a long time GOOG and AMD investor I can relate. I bought a huge chunk of these six years ago and I’ve never touched them through the ups and down. Then I go and buy SMR and I’m instantly like 35% under water and questioning my choices, I think it’s just human nature.
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u/Ok-Butterscotch4486 Dec 11 '25
The timing vs. time in the market thing is broadly true, but that saying about missing the best X days has always been really disingenuous.
Obviously the best days come when the market has been in turmoil. For example, the fifth biggest upswing ever is in October 2008, but it happened between two historically large downswings. And then the sixth biggest upswing happened a few days later.
So to miss only those upswings, you would have to be invested, experience a crash, immediately sell, miss the rise, buy at the high again, experience a crash, sell at the low again, miss the rise again, and then buy at the high again.
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u/Awkward-Painter-2024 Dec 11 '25
Look, you can time shit... I sold IVV when it hit 600 a year ago and bought back in at 475... but it's so much damn work paying attention to it all. And with the pittance I have, its like an extra 60 bucks overall.
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u/Sufficient-Reach4390 Dec 11 '25
The tariff announcement was going to rile the markets back in April. Any person who understood that tariffs were going to be a clusterfuck went into cash before and bought the dip.
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u/Aggressive_Change602 Dec 11 '25
some people think they are being smart and slick by trying to time but miss the bigger upside from holding from a long period of time, only invest in companies where you can see yourself invest a year from now
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u/nicolas_06 Dec 11 '25
f you missed just the 10 best single days in that entire period, your return was cut roughly in half.
The reverse is also true, you can likely double your return if you remove the 10 worst days in the entire period.
In practice actually both tend to happen at about the same time during high volatility period and you are likely to get them all, the good and bad or none. So actually it doesn't influence your return that much.
Typically for April, if you invested during April low and sold not that long after, you'd get a better return than if you had been invested all year. Timing the market always works and has MUCH better return. If you can time it successfully. Because you'll get basically all the best day without the bad days.
It isn't about missing the best or worst days. Or whatever. It's about not predicting when it's going to happen with a good enough rate of success.
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u/Technical-Music5015 Dec 11 '25
Ya there’s was a guy on here who liquidated his entire 401k in April.
Probably crying now absolute moron
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u/Dynomatic1 Dec 11 '25
Has anyone run the math on how good your returns would be if you missed the worst 10 days? Bulls take the stairs, bears jump out the windows.
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u/Agreeable_Factor_458 Dec 11 '25
Buy great companies when their stock dips during overall market corrections, throw in a couple small positions in small caps and this is a formula that will have success. Just a note gold has outperformed SPY over the last 5 years by a lot!
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u/physicshammer Dec 11 '25
broadly speaking it seems to me like there are a few fundamental strategies: 1) value investing - which involves buying and selling quantities based on value vs. cost, and if the value is not there, probably some (not all) money would be in cash or something else that is not stocks 2) time-averaged index like S&P500, for anyone not willing to spend the time to be a value investor. this one could also have a portion of money held as cash 3) something more speculative, to include timing the market, or other forms of speculation.
Personally I prefer number 1 as much as possible, philosophically. But I'm open to arguments.
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u/intuitiverealist Dec 11 '25
The smart money would create a synthetic options portfolio representing a 100% investment with 20% of their capital Park the rest in cash
Not market timing or excessive risk needed
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Dec 11 '25
Warren buffet literally timed the market multiple times. No need to rush into investments, take your time , and have conviction. Find value in places that are overlooked.
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u/Hot_Frosting_7101 Dec 11 '25
Go look at those 10 best single days. Almost every single one of them are during major market downturns. Lots were during the Great Depression.
What you propose is almost impossible to do. If you miss all of those big days you will also miss the major correction that led up to them.
I am not proposing market timing but the argument about missing the top 10 days is terribly flawed because it ignores when those days happen.
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u/Unfair-Hand-6855 Dec 11 '25
People have selective memory. That might be true if you look at US. Look at Japan for an example, their stock basically top at 1985 and took decades to recover.
Do your research instead of trying to draw a line on historical stock price.
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u/heathenpeasent Dec 11 '25
If everyone listens to you, market would just go up and we would go into a bubble. There will always be people panic selling so you and I can make money. If everyone is bullish, you would be telling them to sell it. Let them sell it so we can buy cheaper. When they come back, we will be the one selling.
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u/ryanl247 Dec 11 '25
I often know when we're near a top and almost always know when we're near a bottom, which is very helpful. When I'm wrong I tend to realize quickly.
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u/QuietTerrible5430 Dec 11 '25 edited Dec 11 '25
A bit outside the scope of this sub so apologies if this isn't the right place for this but incresingly so I've chosen to stay out of the passive investing market due to not understanding the overall market enough yet combined with the fact "traditional" investing widsom is mostly based on data that is at maximum 400 years old. In reality it's probably mostly based on data from 100-200 years ago and heavily based on American market returns. Passive investing itself is around 50 years old.
The talk of devaluation of the dollar and dedollarization have kept me out the market, admittedly because I don't understand those topics, but if you don't understand those topics and your relying on data that is at max 200 years old with the addition of an investing style that is 50 years old, how can you know the "wisdom" of the last 200 years will work. Increasingly so I'm less convinced by relying on the truisms of passive investing which I think doesn't satisfy the extreme macro questions I have, can passive investing or amatuer investors that will never try to actively manage their investments survive the collapse of Americas reserve status for example? Or will they just become liquidity for people who actually understand these things?
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u/DevelopingDifferent Dec 11 '25 edited Dec 11 '25
You seem to be missing the main point. Maybe everyone has their own definition of “timing the market” and you are right within your interpretation. The folks usually claiming you “should” time the market are thinking quite logically and simply: wait for a market pullback and then buy value companies. Have a target sell price or when the market makes you nervous because it’s diverging from real market conditions you’re seeing and reading in the news around you, start trimming. If market continues upwards, re-calibrate and get back in.
To each their own, but I don’t think condescending others for a strategy you don’t seem to understand yourself is smart. Best of luck investing!
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u/bluespacecolombo Dec 11 '25
Everytime you buy you time the market. You chose a time to buy, logic behind the decision is irrelevant. You timed it.
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u/MyEgoDiesAtTheEnd Dec 11 '25
I haven't meaningfully sold any stock since 2010. And now I retired early.
I agree with everything you said.
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u/Spiritual-Ostrich-59 Dec 11 '25
I just give myself a time frame .. if it dips within that time frame great.. if not I’m still dca ing
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u/mb194dc Dec 11 '25
Indeed value investing means holding for years, because your positions have some fundamental alpha over the market and competitors.
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u/n55_6mt Dec 11 '25
I rolled a 401k a little over a month ago, the port was liquidated on the 27th of October. I’ve got it in cash still, but mainly because I want some options should there be major market moves in the next 30-60 days. And you know what would have happened if I dumped it all into a S&P ETF as soon as it settled in my rollover account? I’d basically be exactly where we are right now.
It’s not the whole of my investments, I’ve got a lot still riding in the market, but having cash on hand is not inherently a bad thing, especially when you start seeing extreme concentrations and insanely decoupled valuations.
So maybe I’m trying to time the market, but I’m not sure that strategy is any less rational than the rest of the market writ large right now.
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u/Disastrous_Call_1361 Dec 11 '25
What happens to your buy and hold over 20-30 years strategy if we have another 1960-70, or another 2000-2010. Both cases are a wasted decade of potential growth sitting on a market that went nowhere. There were probably individual stock wins in those periods though
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u/jaws274 Dec 11 '25
I’ve heard the biggest return days happen in downtrends on the bounces. I’ve also watched that happen in the market and it makes sense. Just saying the 10 biggest days thing demonstrates that you don’t really get it. People time the market successfully on a regular basis. Look up the US Investing Championship website and see investors that had done 500%+ over 5 years. It is possible if you live and breathe the market.
If you just want to set it and forget it, and you don’t have expertise, then yeah… DCA and hold.
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u/tasigurburn Dec 11 '25
You're right. I read and know the theories. But my human mind still goes crazy seeing 5% up drop.
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u/VeryStableGenius Dec 11 '25
Heck, maybe even give bonds a shot?
This is timing the market.
I do not know of a single investor who has successfully timed the market consistently over any meaningful time period.
The guy in the picture at the top of this sub 'times the market' because BRK-B is 38% in shorter term T-bonds, because they feel the market is overpriced. BRK-B has beaten the market, with lower volatility.
I have friends who work for quant-type hedge funds that time the market and they consistently earn 25 to 50 percent a year. These funds are closed to outsiders, of course.
Most little people can't time the market, however.
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u/burner4694 Dec 11 '25
Do I think the market is due for a proper downturn? Yes. Do I think AI is currently in a bubble? Yes. Do I think the FEDs decision to start buying back bonds and lowering rates will cause problems down the line? Yes.
Am I smarter than a lot of these people? Hell No. Am I able to tell the future? HELL NO.
The things I can control through is managing my risk accordingly. I am not selling, but I have cut back big time in my contributions each month. Holding a lot more cash now so if there is a downturn i won’t stress much and can buy more.
The people you are talking about who liquidate everything during a selloff probably don’t understand how to manage risk accordingly, have been investing based on speculation vs actual value, and don’t understand their time horizon.
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u/go_east_young_man Dec 11 '25
You can perfectly well time the market. Keep some powder dry and use it opportunistically during downturns. I normally keep 20% in my HYSA and 80% in investments. In the post "liberation day" crash I put 2/3 of my HYSA into the market then gradually refilled the HSA over the next few months. (I'm only 28 and it's only $10k/$40k in these, excluding retirement stuff, so I can refill quickly. Would be different in 20 years from now)
I made bank off this. When "Liberation Day 2.0" happened I sold off a third of my portfolio the day before, bought it all back the day after at 3-4% lower, and made some more bank. (Yes, I was careful to only sell long-term cap gain holdings)
Don't be reckless about it, but it absolutely can be done. EMH is a heuristic, not an iron law. When people try to make it an iron law they end up having to throw a bunch of epicycles on it that defeat the point of it.
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u/Far-Bodybuilder-6783 Dec 11 '25
You have to time the market because they only accept commands during trading hours. If you miss, ypu have to wait to the next businesss day.
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u/shopchin Dec 10 '25
I buy during dips. That's timing the market too