So, if you're not buying into this dip, are you planning on saving up, predicting the bottom, and buying then?

That is what I would call trying to time the market.

I am waiting for opportunities I like yes. Yes that is timtiming the market, I only make timing moves a few times per decade. I consider any buy or sale outside my standard buy the market monthly equal amounts to be such.

I'm simply discussing buy the dip as the mindless mantra it has become without a full historical analysis and treating it like a low risk strategy that's isn't timing the market when it really is.

Yes it has worked great for an extended period of time,l for me and others, and my theory is that time has ended. I am not saying go 100% into silver coins or anytihg crazy. I am simply saying the paradigm that we have become accustomed to has shifted.

Look if you had bought dips in the Japan bubble from the 90s where would you be now? Well if you bought the bottom fine but many of the dips have still not recovered value 30 years later. Hence my point statistical analysis of markets is built on historically divergent events. I'm also saying I think this is a super cycle and there won't be a soft landing. I dont know all the outcomes or what will be on sale and I could be wrong this could be the best buying opportunity we have ever seen, but I dont think so unless you are doing individual stocks there might be some bargains the overall market I think there is a lot more pain.

Yes, I believe the easy days of "index and forget it" are once again over for a spell. I remember when my Vanguard 500 farted around for 13 YEARS to get back to its ATH when that money could've have been better invested elsewhere.

How many years before you were even again?

I’ve been getting out of the market over the last month or so.  All my positions were way up with the smallest increase around 50%.  That one dropped to 30% up so I sold it.  I’m strongly considering getting out of everything.  I hate the thought of money sitting idle but I hate the thought of losing money more.  I’m way in the green now, seems stupid to wait for more gains to be erased…..  knowing rates will rise all year and the safe bet of many more bad earnings it seems time to get out?  What will the market do when the next gdp is a decrease and they say it’s officially a recession?  

I wonder if the 2%+ S&P daily declines are over for now now that the Fed has signaled a gradual increase of rates. I was getting awfully close to going on a small buying spree as numerous stocks were getting close to my “too cheap to pass up” price, but now I wonderful if we’ll see more stability with less of those buying opportunities.

Hard to say because I kept adding to my positions automatically and reinvesting divvies so I would have to subtract that+inflation.. Luckily I'm up a lot now even with the 99 crash, that 13 year lull that followed, and the recent 20% haircut but if I would have got out prior to 99 and parked the money in 8% fixed income until jumping back in 09 or so until this past Dec...whoo boy.

I just want the younger folks used to everything bouncing back to ATH after every dip to know that bear markets are a thing and even sideways trading can go on for many years while inflation eats up the value of your stagnant stocks. It can be very demoralizing to watch years of gains vanish in the matter of days.  Funny how no one even talked about the stock market during that time, unlike the booming 90's (Louis Rukeyser RIP was the MAN) and the last 10 years or so of easy gains. Kind of like the charismatic crypto traders getting strangely silent now. My 401K statements became so boring they would eventually go straight from the mailbox to the waste can.

I too miss Louis.  He was an amazing gift to the world of investing.  You are correct Heatseaker, Bear markets can and do happen.  One of the challenges in equity ownership is being in the market on the handful of days that make the difference.  So very few can time it properly.

One solution is to adopt a strategy that allows you to sit and wait out a down market by staying invested in funds/etfs or select equities that have a long history of paying increasing dividends.  As share prices decline, you are getting more shares.  As prices rise, your net worth rises too.  This way you get paid to wait it out.  

The problem is when people fixate on a peak, as if somehow a given investor literally bought all his shares that day.

A ten year slump is nothing. For a guy starting out during it, those are ten years of accumulating significant holdings at bargain prices. For the guys nearing retirement, they had decades prior to that slump and all of those gains.

For a guy who just started a year or two before a 10 year slump? Big deal, the amount he had sunk was a pittance compared to how much he could keep investing during the bear times.

As long as you keep your job, you're good.

People have absurdly short time horizons and can't seem to comprehend a long game.

Same shit different day. Wars, politics, taxes, interest rates, inflation. I was still in HS in 87 and thought meh big deal, some rich a-holes lost some money. Then a few years later I get offered a company matching 401K at my factory job plus I started a small brokerage account with ML and suddenly the market moves get a little more personal with some of my own skin in the game. My friends thought I was a weirdo because I had to watch WSW before going out partying. Back before PBS got taken over by the woke crowd.

I know. I just like to to look back and think about how I could have timed the market AFTER the fact. Meanwhile I just keep buying and ride the waves.

I expect the Fed to cave on the slightest signs of inflation and the economy slipping. The markets will rally and FOMO will exaggerate the move. A disconnect from terrible present earnings won't matter as long as the future is a low interest one with supply chains moving again. Plus I don't expect leftist Yellen and her cronies to hand Trump or DeSantis millions of destroyed 401K's on a silver platter.

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Not buying the dip yet but will be buying the dip shortly.  Maybe in the next few weeks.

Stocks and Crypto at first.  Won't bite on real estate until that market gets a haircut.  There might be another "goldilocks" period where house prices are depressed and mortgage rates also revert back lower like in 2011-2012 coming out of the great recession.

I too think this is a possibility.  Things are already moving the Fed's way as we speak even if May's inflation numbers don't yet illustrate it.

Regarding the supply chains, I'm knee deep in that here in Michigan manufacturing.  Every one is onshoring right now and have been for the past year.  I get calls constantly from companies that previously outsourced overseas who are desperate to bring their supply chains on shore so that they can "make where they sell".

We're working on it right now in terms of getting tooled up and building the assembly lines.  In a few more months, that process will be mostly complete for our largest customer and we'll be making parts.  I'm aware of similar stories elsewhere around the industry.  So in that respect, I think supply chains will improve over the next year or two quite significantly with an emphasis on less reliance on China.

We have 4 identical production lines. 3 pre-covid and the 4th post covid. The 4th line never got a chance to start because it has served as a sacrificial organ donor to keep the other 3 lines going. This poor thing has been stripped to the bone of almost every component with hardly anything coming in from overseas to replace them. Major delays.

In hindsight it saved our ass from missed shipments and our customer's wrath but having a new line look like a pick-n-pull salvage yard was most certainly NOT part of the original plan.

Fed looks at the tight labor market, rising wages and costs and reacts by raising rates.  But what if what you describe - onshoring - is structural?  Then low unemployment (for those who are left to work in this country, we have a massive welfare class as well as the tail end of boomers retiring) with rising wages might be the new normal for a bit.  In which case persistent inflation forces the Fed to keep on raising rates.  It's looking like a possibility.

And I will fully admit, I try to time sectors of the market.  If I see a sector that has been beaten down or just under appreciated I'll put some money in it.  If a sector has been running up for a long time I tend to lighten my position and play with the houses money.  If things start to break down, as was the case recently for energy, I bail after a breach of the 50 dma.  DCA is good for index funds in a bull market.  Not the case now but if you're looking at a time horizon of 10-20 years and ignoring the volatility, then it might make sense now.

Every two weeks.