About your market timing experiment…

How are you defining ’success’? It appears you’re defining success as the stock going up. While this may define the success of a stock, I don’t see this as a success in market timing.

What I see as a success in market timing is comparing the price when you collected the money, vs, when you actually bought the stock. For example if you want to buy a stock that’s currently at $10, if it goes up a bit to $12, then drops to $9, buying it at $9 would be a successful timing, even if the stock then drops to $8. But if that stock goes up to $12, then dips to $11, buying it at 11 was an unsuccessful timing, even if it then skyrockets to $15, because you had the money available to buy it at $10.

I guess what I’m asking in my long drawn out way is for elaboration on what you’re considering successful timing…

-MBirchmeier