After stocks were approaching long-time highs, by the end of the week everything was falling. That’s great news! While I’m still in investing mode, I like to buy when values are down. Part of my paycheck is automatically invested into a 401(k) every other Friday, so perhaps I’ll be getting good prices for my various funds tonight.
I’m hoping that “dollar cost averaging” pays off in the long run.
Published or updated May 12, 2006. If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to the RSS feed or receive daily emails. Follow @flexo on Twitter and visit our Facebook page for more updates.
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Luke Landes founded Consumerism Commentary in 2003 and has been building online communities since 1990. Luke, also known as Flexo, has contributed to PC World Magazine, US News, Forbes, and other publications. 
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Word – damn stocks keep going up, bad for us youngsters trying to buy stocks for our retirement. Go recession ;-)
On the one hand, I like to see my balances moving up, and on the other, I like the feeling I’m getting “a deal” when I invest.
If you believe in an efficient market, which I suspect a lot of people here do, falling stocks are always a bad sign. Your implicit assumption in saying this was a good week for you is that stocks will end up at the same price in the long run as they otherwise would have. A strict application of the efficient market hypothesis says this is hogwash.
Just saying.
Keep up the good work.
You may be right, Kurt, and thanks for the well wishes. Unfortunately, we will never know whether a price today affects a price 30 years from now to a high degree of assuredness. Funny things, hypothetical situations.
What I do know is that investing today, I’ll be better off in the long run than I would be had I invested the same amount yesterday when the prices were higher.
I’m not claiming I have a strategy. Today just happened to be payday.
No, don’t let stocks go down now. I have a house to buy. After September then they can fall as far as I am concearn.
Heh…..actually I’ll sell out if I have to. Probably should anyway. Still if the market could generate another couple thousand for me before I close it would be nice.
Besides haven’t you heard of sell in May, walk away. That historically if your investing money between Oct-May you make money, and from June to Sept you lose money (or something like that – it on one of Cavuto’s shows, kinda wish I’d paid closer attention.