salaryguru,
Have you looked at how following market timing "gurus" either in the media or on the internet affects your portfolio performance? Following market timing or "switching" strategies how quickly does one have to take on paying employment to avoid exhausting their portfolio?
Thanks for your insight on this.
Hi Hyper,
I haven't figured out a good way to look at this issue other than use other's results. The other thing is that I have not been inclined to consider the strategies I've read about. Wabmester posted an interesting study several months (maybe longer) ago that back-tested a number of switching strategies and found one of them to provide some advantage throughout time. (If wab is still out there and isn't mad at me for debating him about race issues, he might be able to direct us to that study again.)
But as I recall, the amount of portfolio that you needed to switch in order to see an advantage was significant and I didn't feel comfortable doing that.
I haven't looked at JWR1945's switching strategy stuff in a long time. I ran some of his retirement calculators when he first made them available. Again, I wouldn't be comfortable switching that much of my portfolio at a time based on historically back-tested results.
So . . . at least for now I'm avoiding market timing and portfolio switching. But if my portfolio was plummeting toward zero, I would probably change my mind.