Years ago, I had my eye on a specific tech stock I really wanted to add to my portfolio. Its price had been dropping, but I wasn’t ready to pounce. The reason? I was intent on adding it to my brokerage account only once its price had truly bottomed out.
You can probably guess how things turned out. I hesitated on buying that stock, and its price jumped back up — and I missed out on those gains.
See, what I tried to do was time the market. And I failed miserably.
And it’s no surprise that I failed, because there are countless studies out there proving that timing the market just isn’t a good investment strategy. A better bet is simply to buy quality stocks regularly.
Just as investors try to time the stock market, homebuyers often try to buy a house when prices are at their very lowest. But nobody can say for sure which direction home prices will go, so this can be a dangerous strategy.
This post originally appeared at The Motley Fool.