{"id":10386,"date":"2016-02-11T11:06:56","date_gmt":"2016-02-11T19:06:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.marketriders.com\/investing\/?p=10386"},"modified":"2016-12-21T07:27:38","modified_gmt":"2016-12-21T15:27:38","slug":"investing-basics-secret-market-timer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.marketriders.com\/investing\/investing-basics-secret-market-timer\/","title":{"rendered":"Investing Basics: Are You A Secret Market Timer?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Investors love the idea of being calm, cool and collected. Ask anyone and they&#8217;ll profess their ability to steer through any market, face any calamity and maintain a clear plan of attack.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I never time the market,&#8221; is what you hear. &#8220;Never have and never will.&#8221; But the fact is that you may be a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.marketriders.com\/investing\/time-in-the-market-not-market-timing\/\">secret market timer<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s review. At any time during the past five years, have you ever:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Temporarily lowered\u00a0your contributions to a retirement plan?<\/li>\n<li>Stopped contributing for a quarter, a month or a paycheck cycle?<\/li>\n<li>Held dividends as cash when you normally would reinvest them?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If you said &#8220;yes&#8221; to any of these queries, you are a secret\u00a0market timer. People tend to think of market timing as selling a stock or an index in order to take a profit. But it&#8217;s more complicated than that.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-10393\" src=\"https:\/\/www.marketriders.com\/investing\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/bear-907684_1920-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"secret market timer\" width=\"434\" height=\"289\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.marketriders.com\/investing\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/bear-907684_1920-800x533.jpg 800w, https:\/\/www.marketriders.com\/investing\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/bear-907684_1920-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.marketriders.com\/investing\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/bear-907684_1920-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.marketriders.com\/investing\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/bear-907684_1920.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 434px) 100vw, 434px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s also waiting to invest. The same fear that leads us to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.marketriders.com\/investing\/when-is-it-time-to-sell-an-investment\/\">sell an otherwise perfectly good long-term investment<\/a> can keep us from investing, too, to our own detriment.<\/p>\n<p>Truly passive investors put money into their portfolio regardless of what&#8217;s going on in the stock market. They don&#8217;t pay attention to the headlines. They don&#8217;t dig into company earnings reports.<\/p>\n<p>They aren&#8217;t concerned about election cycles, terrorism, the price of some commodity or who won the Super Bowl.<\/p>\n<p>The truly\u00a0passive investor just buys the same dollar amount of investments period after period, never varying, and rebalances to stay on track. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.marketriders.com\/investing\/5-real-tax-breaks-must-miss\/\">They enjoy the tax breaks<\/a> offered by 401(k) and IRA accounts. And they look at their total return perhaps once a year, maybe twice.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s the problem with sitting on your cash: You&#8217;ll get it wrong far more often than you&#8217;ll get it right.<\/p>\n<p>Imagine all the folks who panicked during 2008 and 2009. They rode the market down, checking balances daily until they just couldn&#8217;t stand it. &#8220;Uncle!&#8221; they cried, and sold.<\/p>\n<p>Then the market turned and started a multi-year run higher. Many of those who went to cash waited&#8230;and waited&#8230;and waited. They missed the gains and\u00a0years of dividends they could have reinvested.<\/p>\n<h2>Discipline and freedom<\/h2>\n<p>Missing an up cycle is a big deal. If you have to absorb market declines along the way, that&#8217;s okay \u2014 as long as you don&#8217;t panic and sell. But the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.marketriders.com\/investing\/give-yourself-a-break-from-retirement-worry\/\">far more dangerous reaction to a market decline<\/a> is to then sit out the rebound that follows.<\/p>\n<p>Are you a secret\u00a0market timer? &#8220;No, never!&#8221; you might protest. But if you sit on cash and miss years of gains and dividends, you aren&#8217;t doing anything different than the trader who jumps in and out based on the latest news.<\/p>\n<p>Low-cost, passive indexing is a discipline for sure. But it&#8217;s also a kind of freedom. Your money will compound and grow, and the results will be better than 90% of Wall Street traders.<\/p>\n<p>Just don&#8217;t pick and choose your markets. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.marketriders.com\/investing\/your-investing-process-is-what-matters-most\/\">Commit to your process<\/a> and let it work for you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Investors love the idea of being calm, cool and collected. Ask anyone and they&#8217;ll profess their ability to steer through any market, face any calamity and maintain a clear plan &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.marketriders.com\/investing\/investing-basics-secret-market-timer\/\">Read more <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":10393,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_wp_rev_ctl_limit":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,55],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v19.6.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Investing Basics: Are You A Secret Market Timer? | MarketRiders<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"&quot;I never time the market,&quot; is what you will hear. &quot;Never have and never will.&quot; But the fact is that you may be a\u00a0secret market timer.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.marketriders.com\/investing\/investing-basics-secret-market-timer\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"Investing Basics: Are You A Secret Market Timer? | MarketRiders\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"&quot;I never time the market,&quot; is what you will hear. &quot;Never have and never will.&quot; But the fact is that you may be a\u00a0secret market timer.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.marketriders.com\/investing\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/bear-907684_1920.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@marketriders\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@marketriders\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"MarketRiders\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.marketriders.com\/investing\/investing-basics-secret-market-timer\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.marketriders.com\/investing\/investing-basics-secret-market-timer\/\",\"name\":\"Investing Basics: Are You A Secret Market Timer? 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