Topic: How To Invest

What is Pat’s commentary for the week of May 26, 2015

Article Excerpt

Learning how to “time the market” is an impossible goal, at least on any consistent basis.  If you knew how to time the market, you could routinely cash in on coming price trends in individual stocks, or the market as a whole. If so, you could, as the saying goes, “Make all the money in the world.” If this was humanly possible, somebody would have done it by now, in view of the many who have tried. You can get lucky from time to time, of course. But trying to time the market will wind up costing you money in the long run. Eventually, any market-timing skill you thought you had will fail you. It will often do so when it can hurt you most. As years pass, however, successful investors do tend to develop a sense of “when to pull the trigger”, as professionals say. This is different from timing the market. Knowing when to pull the trigger means you have learned…