Market Timing: Should You Attempt It?
it successfully and consistently. Yet market timing appears to be increasingly embraced by mutual fund investors and the professional managers of fund portfolios alike.
John C. Bogle in "Common Sense on Mutual Funds"
Investors often develop a cultlike devotion to one investment guru or another. And when they do so, objectivity goes out the window. That isn't to say that the investors' psychological needs should be dismissed. After all, investing is an arena filled with uncertainty; it's only natural for people to seek approval and affirmation in such an environment. But it is hazardous to one's wealth to seek such psychological security at the price of objectivity.
Mark Hulbert in "Wearing Your Heart on Your Portfolio" from the NYTimes(2/6/00)
After spending many years in Wall Street and after making and losing millions of dollars I want to tell you this: It never was my thinking that made the big money for me. It always was my sitting. Got that? My sitting tight!
Reminiscences of a Stock Operator by Edwin Lefevre
Speculation: The activity of forecasting the psychology of the market.
Speculative motive: The object of securing profit from knowing better than
the market what the future will bring forth.
John Maynard Keynes, "The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money"
There's something in people, you might even call it a little bit of a gambling instinct . . . I tell people [investing] should be dull. It shouldn't be exciting. Investing should be more like watching paint dry or watching grass grow. If you want excitement, take $800 and go to Las Vegas.
Paul Samuelson, "The Ultimate Guide to Indexing"
....there are confident ones; they move from ninety-ten in stocks-bonds to five-ninety-five in stocks-bonds. That implies a degree of self-confidence bordering on hubris and self-deception. Over the decades, when both groups...have equal limited (!) ability to "time," the cautious chaps who alternate between sixty-five-thirty-five in stocks-bonds and sixty-forty are likely to end up with a superior risk-corrected total return score.
Paul Samuelson, "Journal of Portfolio Managment," Fall 1994
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