Market timing

Moving between assets on a view about short-term market direction.

The evidence against it is unusually consistent. Returns are concentrated in a small number of days, missing a handful of the best ones destroys most of the long-run result, and the best days cluster near the worst ones, so an investor who exits after a fall usually misses the recovery.

The alternative is not passivity but structure: a fixed allocation, a rebalancing rule, and a valuation discipline for individual holdings.

Time in the market, and a rule for what to do when it moves.