I have found that in times like these, just holding works best.
If you can avoid buying at the top, and selling at the bottom, you probably beat 80% of investors.
Controlling your emotions IMHO is more important than all the fancy stuff you can learn.
I know most people in this group probably disagree with me.
Kind of a strawman argument. Almost nobody exercising risk management (that’s what selling, however much it may be,in a bad market is) buys at the top and sells at the bottom. In fact it’s almost statistically impossible to do deliberately. ergo it is at least on a par with 80% of investors and in fact could be expected to beat at least some investors. Like the proverbial chimp throwing darts at a list of ETF’s
Exercising risk management by selling/re-allocating in most cases does not involve anything emotional. Yes, some people get wiggy. Some even sell on the way up because they don’t believe it will go up any more. Preemptive panicking. Some sell on the way up just to re-balance. But it is not a case of This act(equals)that motivation. Most market timers are pretty methodical and not emotional. Personally I don’t say selling, reallocating or whatever they want to call it, in a demonstrably bad market environment even constitutes market timing.
And finally, I don’t care what 80% of people are doing. They are not a benchmark. And even market timers beat the index buy/holders (the 80% I am inferring) during times when it works. Maybe not at other times when doing nothing works better. So, there’s always some cherry picking going on.
It’s good to remember that Peter Lynch’s Magellan fund, arguably the most successful mutual fund of the 20th century, lost money for the majority of its investors. Guess why
We’re 15% down for the year, about the same from the high. Some judicious buying in order?