The Folly of Market Timing
Predicting short-term equity price movements requires accurately forecasting macroeconomic policy shifts, corporate earnings surprises, geopolitical developments, and collective human psychology. Decades of historical data show that the vast majority of market gains occur in brief clusters of just ten to twenty trading days each decade.
How Dollar-Cost Averaging (DCA) Works
By investing a fixed dollar sum at regular calendar intervals (e.g., on the 1st and 15th of each month), you mechanically acquire fewer shares when prices are inflated and more shares when prices are depressed. This automatically dampens overall portfolio volatility without requiring you to watch daily market charts.