Trying to Time the Stock Market Is a Bad Idea -- Here's Why
Day traders, beware. There's an ever-growing mountain of evidence that even the most sophisticated professionals can't consistently outperform the market -- most of them don't even beat index fund benchmarks in any given single year. If you plan to figure out which days stocks will rise and fall, it might be time to consider a new strategy.
Luckily, there are investment strategies that don't require you to perfectly predict the stock market, but they'll still deliver fantastic returns regardless of timing.
This is one of the simplest challenges in active management, but it's almost always overlooked. In the most basic sense, you make money by buying stocks low and selling them high. That means you have to figure out not only when to buy a stock but also when to sell it. If you think that a stock is cheap and it's a great time to buy, that's fine. But you have to recognize that you only take profits by selling in the future.
Source Fool.com
