Attempting to anticipate and “time” the markets.

In the November 2018 edition of Chancellor Financial’s E-news we included an article entitled “Timing Isn’t Everything (for Smart Investors)”.  This covered the rationale of staying invested during periods of market volatility.  When the article was written, the corrections in October 2018 had already taken place, but worse was yet to come with most of the world’s major stock markets retracing to make the most of 2018 and in particular, December 2018 a period to forget, investment wise.  Many investors would have found it difficult to believe that the markets would recover to such an extent that Quarter 1 of 2019 was the best start for risk assets in a decade.  Stocks credit and commodities rebounded from a miserable 2018 according to Bloomberg, including a rebound of 13% in the American S&P 500 Index. 

Clearly these rises are not guaranteed, and the markets can fall back again at any time, but they do show the folly of attempting to anticipate and “time” the markets.