Market Timing

(MoneyWatch) 

Should I try to time the market?

Forget it.

Certainly the most natural urge you can have in today's bear market is to bail out of money-losing assets and put all you've got left safely in the bank, where it can't keep losing. But the fact is that market rebounds tend to occur quickly and unpredictably. If you guess wrong and hold all your savings in cash when stocks ricochet off their low point, you'll have locked in the loss to this point and captured none of the rebound. It's tired advice and hard to stomach in these volatile times. But the best way to go is to select a mixture of stocks, bonds, and cash, and stick with it over time.

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