...
That said, I thought this comparison was bogus when I first read it in Venita's book, and I still think it's bogus today. Why? Because the perfect market timer isn't getting credit for interest on his cash while he is waiting for the year's best time to invest. Peter Perfect gets to invest only the $2,000 that he had at the start of the year. It's as though he never heard of interest bearing savings or money market accounts. ...
Still, I love this example because it's such a perfect instance of lying with statistics. The people who promote the concept of investing in stocks immediately, whenever you have cash available, are fudging the numbers, apparently just to convince nervous investors that it's ok to jump right in regardless of market conditions.