I learned a long time ago to never try to time the market. It’s served me very well.
Billionaries time the market. They dont sit idle and watch their money go down. They move them around to other assets, or sit with lots of cash, like buffet did this time around.
Thats why its going up today, because big money were sitting and waiting for a sign to buy. This is it.
They do because they can do two things that you and I do not:
- High frequency trading on servers that can process new information and use it before anyone else on the market can. These servers are located as close as possible to the trading exchanges, because the extra milliseconds from speed of light travel will make a difference.
- Trump personally telling them when he’s about to make a big policy change
For the rest of us, timing the market is dumb. I’ll even say that you might be right about today. You might not be right about tomorrow, or the next. The sum of those moves may even be profitable overall, but not enough to beat someone who stuck with the sp500 with transaction costs taken into account.
Well yeah, I agree about insider info, thats a big reason too. But buying when stocks are low price? Its the same idea as buying groceries when they are on discount. Anyone can do that.
Maybe it goes down some more, but long term its always good to buy when its cheap. Everyone who bought in previous downturns for the last few decades made a lot of money if they didnt sell.