Your thoughts?? Long term investment or short term?
Below is just tip of the iceberg for your question:
When attempting to time the market , a stock buyer tries to predict the future market price of a stock. Meanwhile, when an investor invests to grow their wealth in the long term, they buy stocks without trying to guess when the market will be at its lowest and highest point.18 Aug 2020
Time in the Market vs. Timing the Market
Take for example a story of three friends: Laurie, Angela and Karen are old college friends who began investing in 1987, each with $100,000.
Karen has invested her $100,000 in four installments, each one timed at the top of a bull market. She waits until the market is “good” before investing and she never sells.
Angela is great at recognizing the bottom of a bear market, and has also invested her $100,000 in four installments – each one made right at a market bottom.
Laurie never pays much attention to what the market does on any given day. She invested her $100,000 in one lump sum and hasn’t done anything with it since.
Laurie got into the market of the fall of 1987, right before the “Black Monday” crash, which meant her portfolio’s value was cut by more than 30% in her first few months, leaving her far “behind” her two friends. But when the three of them looked at the larger, long-term picture, it was a different story. Laurie – who never watched or timed anything – is now well ahead of her friends.
Market Return Source: CBOE daily; S&P 500® (SPXSM) Price Return 8/25/1987 to 5/31/1988, and S&P 500®. Total Return (SPXTR) inclusive of dividend reinvestment 6/1/1988 to 12/31/2015. Note: 1% flat annualized return used for uninvested cash in the above hypothetical scenario. This example is fictional and does not depict any actual person or event.
The moral of the story? Invest assets in the market as soon as you are able. Yes, there will be ups and downs, but as long as the world economy continues to improve living standards, investors will be rewarded with compounding growth on their investments. Even supernatural timing of market bottoms doesn’t beat time in the market.