Originally Posted by
ZippyNH
+1
Just regularly deposit money...it will do what is called dollar cost averaging of your shares/, investments....
By attempting to time the market you can miss the biggest ups and the biggest downs...
With 35+ years to go, it more important to get the $$ in and invested than worry about trying to get an extra half a percentage THIS year if you do it right, cause you might miss a bigger gain overall by sitting on a pile of cash at 0.01% in a money market.
Folks who tend to look at they accounts yearly tend to do best at not micromanageing things and do well...just rebalance and adjust for your goals/age or long term outlook...
Few people can ride the ups and downs emotionally of a big day/week/month and not take money out on a good day, then miss the top, or yank it out at the bottom, making a loss real, then miss an increase.
+2 Opinion: I agree S&P 500 Index fund. Ask Warren Buffett. If you're going to "time the market" I would invest more as the market comes down. The risk is that something worse than has happened in the last 100 years will happen, which is possible. What you don't want to do is invest in the 500, see the market crashing and switching at or near the next bottom. The fact is the people that invest in the stock market as it's falling do better than the folks that try to time the market to buy at the bottom, which is an unknown price point, and sell when they think it's "high" which is an unknown price point. Chances are the S&P 500 will average around 10% for the next 100 years.