Avoid timing the inevitable market drops

Article Excerpt

To succeed as an investor, you need to overcome the temptation to think that you can succeed as a fairweather investor. That’s one who is in the market when prices are going up, and out of the market during the inevitable downturns. If you try to do that, you will wind up selling when much of the damage is done, and buying your way back in when much of the recovery has already taken place. Worse, you may wind up buying back in at higher prices than you got when you sold. Great long-term record of inflation-beating returns Stock markets tend to go up over time. Over the past 100 years, the U.S. equity markets, for example, delivered a total return (including dividends) averaging 10% per year. At that rate, and factoring in compounding, investors who stayed invested doubled their money every 7 years. Over 10 years, the return was even better—just over 14% per year. And even when taking inflation into account, investors still…