Timing Isn't Everything

What’s For Dinner? Ok, let me set the scene…

Your spouse, your significant other, your friend, your sibling, or someone close to you says, “Let’s go out to dinner tonight! Your choice, just say where…”

For the next few minutes, you list off ideas one by one, and your counterpart shuts down each of them. Sometimes with a “Nah,” sometimes just a look of disgust, and sometimes with a “Didn’t we just go there?” Until you finally feel defeated and surrender with the response, “Where do you want to go?”

In these situations – which I am sure some of us are very familiar with – we learn that an introductory promise of “your choice” really isn’t the case.

Oh, I Would Never… In personal finance, I often experience a similar head fake. A client or potential client will introduce a conversation by telling me how foolish it would be to try and time the market, how market timing is an impossible endeavor – as I am shaking my head saying, “Yes, yes, that’s correct” – and then they proceed to tell me their plan. What’s their plan? To take a stab at some variation of market timing.

It sounds like this: “I know market timing is a fool’s errand, and I know it’s impossible to know the future, but here’s what I’m thinking… There is so much unknown out there right now, I think I’ll wait until markets settle a bit” or “I’ll invest after markets pull back a bit” or “Until this geopolitical unrest is settled” or “Until this jobs report is published” or “Until this election is over.”

How am I to respond? They know I don’t put any faith in being able to successfully time markets. Think about it, if I was a successful “timer” once, God knows I couldn’t do it again (be consistent), and if I could, I sure wouldn’t let anyone in on my secret. I’d just sail off into the sunset with my billion-dollar timing skills.

Links mentioned in this episode:

• http://thoughtsonmoney.com
• http://thebahnsengroup.com