Topic: How To Invest

What is Pat’s commentary for the week of September 23, 2014

Article Excerpt

The practice of market timing consists of coming up with and acting on a series of guesses (or estimates, or assessments of the probabilities) to use in your buying and selling decisions, with the aim of buying near a low and selling near a high. Most market timing systems attempt to interpret and detect buy and sell signals in trading patterns and history. Some of the decisions you make with the help of market timing will bring you profits, and others will cost you money. Many investors start out with an exaggerated idea of the value and importance of market timing. Most eventually become disillusioned with it, after they figure out that it’s costing them money. Market timing can pay off sporadically, of course. Although the results are largely random, successes and failures are apt to run in spurts. The worst thing that can happen to you near the start of an investing career is that you make a series of successful…