Market Timing Schmarket Timing

38Chevy454 said:
A small blip is nothing to get concerned about. I view this as buying opportunity :cool:
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Eh, the above statement apparently conflicts with the following. ;)
... don't try to time market...
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Heck, I want to time the market!

I want to buy from the people who sell low. :LOL:
 
BTravlin said:
Not market timing but I did get lucky and replenish my cash position close to the peak.
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I don't care if people call me a dirty market timer or a contrarian or a rebalancer. Buy low/sell high makes me money, and I want to be more successful at it.

However, there's risk of being wrong so I only do a little bit at a time. Never 100% in cash nor 100% in stock, so my trades only help a bit, but it makes me feel like I am so smart when I make that little bit extra.
 
NW-Bound said:
However, there's risk of being wrong so I only do a little bit at a time. Never 100% in cash nor 100% in stock, so my trades only help a bit, but it makes me feel like I am so smart when I make that little bit extra.
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+1.

When RE, I am counting on doing a bit of trading with "a little bit" of my portfolio to pass the time. Not a lot, just to hedge against market a bit and to "feel like I am" a bit smart. :)
 
If the markets go up, and you now have enough assets to meet your financial goals, selling to reduce equities/risk is not market timing, IMHO, it's tailoring your investments to your own financial situation.

I was pretty much always 100% equities during my accumulation phase. Now, it's a different story.

However, like many previous posts, I'm reluctant to sell aggressively because I hate to pay the capital gains taxes. I probably should overcome this hangup and pay some taxes, rather than endure the pain of watching my portfolio evaporate during the next bear market.

The problem is, what to do with the funds generated. 1% CDs and money markets are sure (small) losers.


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In the past I tried to time the market and had flat results at best, and it was stressful for me. So now i keep at least one year in cash and maintain an approximate 50/50 allocation. I am comfy with this at this point. I was down .86% yesterday, I like that better than -2%! but of course were the market up 2% I would not enjoy as much growth as well as not having as much loss.
 
BTravlin said:
Not market timing but I did get lucky and replenish my cash position close to the peak.
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Did something similar. Finally decided to flip my old 401k to an IRA, so did all the paperwork and the cut a check for me on Wednesday! So now just need to do the IRA. But I feel I got lucky as I sold high and will buy low if things stay like this until I get the check. Could make some nice advances I think.
 
For all of July the SP500 was down -1.4%. The sky is not falling ... yet.

POP QUIZ: What was the previous losing month before July?
What happened after that?

No fair looking this up :nonono:. Put your hand over the part below if you really want to guess. Answer is below if you are curious. :)





-----------------------
Answer: January 2014 the SP500 was down -3.5%.
Then we had:
Feb +4.6%
Mar +0.8%
Apr +0.7%
May +2.3%
June +2.1%
 
BTravlin said:
I wish it was available for re-balancing but this is the spending kind of cash.
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Eh, if one feels lucky he can go on margin. A true market timer would not let shortage of cash keep him from trading. Just sayin'...
 
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LOL! said:
Thanks for the heads-up on capitulation. It takes some guts to do that AND to post about it.
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Heck yeah man, I at least wait to see if I was right to decide whether to post about it later.
 
NW-Bound said:
Eh, if one feels lucky he can go on margin. A true market timer would not let shortage of cash keep him from trading. Just sayin'...
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True but my aversion to risk won't allow such shenanigans.
 
I have gone on margin before, but for only about 2% of portfolio. I usually keep 20-25% in cash, and no less than 15%, but much of it is in I-bond which I do not want to cash out, or in 401k stable value funds, and occasionally I want to make short-term trades in my after-tax accounts where I may not have that much free cash.

So, in 2010 during a market downturn I went on margin for 2%, while I still had net cash. It was intended for a short-term move, but then it stretched out to a few months. The margin interest that they charged was fairly high at 8 or 9%. So, for a 3 month duration it cut quite a bit into my profit.

I have not done that since, but will not rule out such option if the market tumbles hard. :)
 
I recall there have been several studies that show maintaining at least 25% equities has less risk (over time) than being all fixed income. The other problem with market timing is that you have to be right twice. Are you felling lucky? Well are ya!:)
 
There are so many flavors of market timing. To name a few:
1) Following moving averages (200 day, 150 day, 50 day, exponential moving averages, etc).
2) Hunches based on light analysis
3) Bets based on thorough single company analysis
4) Timing overall allocation based on some fundamental and technical indicators

Then there are different time periods to hold the equities. Seconds, days, months, years.

I do not think all of these are equally smart or equally stupid. Some of them are definitely gambling. A *very* few of them interest me.

There have been some long term winners doing market timing. I'm thinking of unpublished ones that occasionally surface in magazine articles. Thee is never enough information to quite understand the methods and to be honest the success is not fully documented. An example is private money run by Edward Thorp (math professor at UC Irvine, wrote Beat the Dealer about card counting for poker in the 1960's).

For some market timing is like a beautiful blond female mirage.
 
robnplunder said:
With trading account, I tend to get in at 7, and get out at 18 or 19. Don't make much money that way but I am not very greedy when I gamble.
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Hmmm...if you can let me know how you get a 157% gain I would like to be "not very greedy" too! :LOL:
 
DH was so happy to get the grants finished from our donor-advised fund late this week, and I'm looking at the Thursday market drop and thinking "ouch!"

But accounts are still nicely up since the start of the year, so it really doesn't matter.
 
Buying the dips has been the right move every time for the last three years.

It will work until it doesn't.


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There are so many flavors of market timing. To name a few:

1) Following moving averages (200 day, 150 day, 50 day, exponential moving averages, etc).

2) Hunches based on light analysis

Lsb, In reality, I think all of my trades have been #2. Though in MY mind at the moment of execution, I have convinced myself it was detailed, researched based intensive analysis.




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I'll admit to market timing. I had some cash I had been waiting to put to work, so I bought $125k of SDY at 11:45 am(EST) yesterday. We'll see how that works out.
 
Gumby said:
I'll admit to market timing. I had some cash I had been waiting to put to work, so I bought $125k of SDY at 11:45 am(EST) yesterday. We'll see how that works out.
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Were you deciding between several different ETFs?
Why SDY?
 
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