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Market Timing Quotes
What the Investment Experts Recommend
Kirk
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Updated March 13, 2016:   Most respected financial experts strongly recommend against market timing. They say, if you want to try to time the market, then you should only do it with a small "explore" portion of your otherwise well diversified "core and explore" portfolio.
  • Paul Samuelson, "Journal of Portfolio Management," Fall 1994 ....there are confident ones; they move from ninety-ten (90:10) in stocks-bonds to five-ninety-five (5:95) in stocks-bonds. That implies a degree of self-confidence bordering on hubris and self-deception. Over the decades, when both groups...have equal limited ability to "time," the cautious chaps who alternate between sixty-five-thirty-five in stocks-bonds and sixty-forty are likely to end up with a superior risk-corrected total return score.

  • John C. Bogle in Common Sense on Mutual Funds The idea that a bell rings to signal when investors should get into or out of the stock market is simply not credible. After nearly fifty years in this business, I do not know of anybody who has done it successfully and consistently. I don't even know anybody who knows anybody who has done it successfully and consistently. Yet market timing appears to be increasingly embraced by mutual fund investors and the professional managers of fund portfolios alike.

  • Benjamin Graham in The Intelligent Investor "We are convinced that the intelligent investor can derive satisfactory results from pricing of either type (market timing or fundamental analysis via price). We are equally sure that if he places his emphasis on timing, in the sense of forecasting, he will end up as a speculator and with a speculator's financial results." And "The speculator's primary interest lies in anticipating and profiting from market fluctuations. The investor's primary interest lies in acquiring and holding suitable securities at suitable prices."

  • John Maynard Keynes, "The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money " Speculation: The activity of forecasting the psychology of the market. Speculative motive: The object of securing profit from knowing better than the market what the future will bring forth.


  • Paul Samuelson, "The Ultimate Guide to Indexing" There's something in people, you might even call it a little bit of a gambling instinct . . . I tell people [investing] should be dull. It shouldn't be exciting. Investing should be more like watching paint dry or watching grass grow. If you want excitement, take $800 and go to Las Vegas

  • Burton G. Malkiel in "How Much Higher Can the Market Go" from The Wall Street Journal (9/22/99) As I have often argued: Even the Almighty cannot determine a single correct value for the market as a whole.
  • “Stocks tend to fluctuate.” -- J.P. Morgan    
  • "Those who say it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it.“ -- Chinese proverb
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Disclaimer:  The information contained in this web site is not intended to constitute financial advice, and is not a recommendation or solicitation to buy, sell or hold any security. This blog is strictly informational and educational and is not to be construed as any kind of financial advice, investment advice or legal advice. Copyright © 2011 Kirk Lindstrom. Note: "CORE & Explore®" was coined by and is a registered trademark of Charles Schwab & Co., Inc.