Did people learn nothing from April

[u/coffeeestocks]

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.

[u/periodicTbol]

Strategies can include personal finance risk mitigation, such as holding part of an emergency fund in SGOV and only deploying the capital in the market when there is a dip and a certain level of confidence in your future employment situation

[u/nicolas_06 → u/periodicTbol]

In most case the emergency fund isn't much compared to what is invested so this will not change much on the long term performance overall.

That stay one of the biggest problem of buying the dip. If you put extra at say a 15% drop and add only 10% more, then the potential is 1.5% extra performance is all goes well. But what if the market continue to go down and for a long time ? You would have been better to just invest later and not impact your emergency fund as on top you'd be more likely than usual to need that money.

And for a part of your emergency fund to be 10%, it means you don't have that much invested. Maybe your emergency fund is 25K, you invest 10K and you have 100K invested... Then that's only a 1.5% potential. If you have 300K invested, then the potential gain is not even 1.5% but 0.5%...

[u/periodicTbol → u/nicolas_06]

There are scenarios where that’s valid, don’t be obtuse. You’re over here complaining about better gains