Timing the Market

So I know that most of you don't find my posts as exciting as Shawnna's (dang pregnancy bias) but I going to keep posting anyways.

The last couple of weeks have been kind of interesting with the huge roller coaster ride that the stock market has been doing, but what is interesting is people's reaction to it. Listening to people at work talk about taking all of their money out of stocks and waiting for the "bottom" of the stock market before they put it back in.

If it was that easy I think everyone would be doing that. But the risk is that you wait too long and you don't get your money back in in time. Here is link to an article about what your return would be if you missed just the best 5, 10 or 20 stock return days. By just missing the 10 best days in almost 10 years, your return would drop from 8.4% to 3.4%. That is a lot of money to give up to try and "beat" the system.

If you still think that you can time the market, try your luck at http://www.chartgames.com/ which allows you to try and buy and sell stocks at historical positions based on stock charts. It is pretty interesting and shows how difficult it is to "time" the market.

So us, we will continue saving just like we have been, realizing that the same amount of money is buying more shares now which will help in the long run.

Ok, I'll get down off of my soapbox now.

I see your lips moving, but all I hear is Blah ,Blah, Blah. : ) I love you honey : )