Here's a statement of the obvious: The opinions expressed here are those of the participants, not those of the Mutual Fund Observer. We cannot vouch for the accuracy or appropriateness of any of it, though we do encourage civility and good humor.
I would add that there are way less outstanding shares/co's to purchase over the past 10-12 years..due to private co's having easier access to capital no need to go public, sure buybacks, different less capital intensive co's such as software based need less capital so no rush to go to market, etc.
So would it be wrong to say that this is an "inflationary scenario" causing the market to continusouly rise due to supply/demand....more money chasing less product....
Well, the steady march upward seems as convoluted and hard to explain to myself as it does to many market observers. The nice thing about maintaining an allocation model is it prevents us reacting emotionally to whatever perceptions we and the pundits happen to hold at any particular moment. While I’ll confess to some slight trading around the edges, the portfolio remains allocated as planned.
Yes, markets usually go up. It may well be that all the reasons suggested here and elsewhere (like the millennials inheriting trillions and the Fed being on our side) will be enough to keep the beast climbing higher.
However, to borrow a lovely phrase from a lovely poem by Andrew Marvell …
@Stillers, Are you ruling out a US stock market correction? If not, what would be the reason for the next correction and when? Seems like the long list of things you mentioned are going to be there for years.
Um no, no reasonable investor rules out a stock market correction and nothing I posted suggested that.
Yes, several of those factors I posted will likely be there for years, possibly beyond my remaining number.
What's it all mean, to me at least?
(1) It seems likely those and other positive market factors will collectively act to possibly limit/reduce the number, severity and/or duration of corrections and bear markets.
(2) I will continue with stock allocations stretched to the top of my allocation range UNTIL the risk/reward of bond funds, CDs and/or MMkts significantly improves.
(3) I will continue to BTD until it stops working.
@stillers: "(2) I will continue with stock allocations stretched to the top of my allocation range UNTIL the risk/reward of bond funds, CDs and/or MMkts significantly improves."
Would a rise to say 2.5 -3.0 % be enough in CD's to peak your interest ? Derf
BTD sounds good in theory, but then so does "buy low, sell high". Easier said than done. 1. Where does the cash come from? 2. When does one pull the trigger, i.e. how much does the dip need to be to buy?
The examples below are not intended to "prove" that BTD doesn't work. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. Obviously if one waits for too large a dip before buying, one is stuck holding cash forever. And if one pulls the trigger on small dips, one risks losing a little bit on most buys - there are frequent small dips that don't bring the market back down to below where you started.
So I'm curious about how people choose their thresholds and where they get their cash. Here are some sample scenarios starting on Oct 1, 2020 (roughly a year ago), comparing BTD with "buy when cash is available". I use VFIAX as the investment vehicle and market proxy. Red font indicates longer delays (more than a month) before investing on a dip.
For Q1 (where does the cash come from), I have worked through two hypotheticals: a) One starts with $1200 on Oct 1 b) One has a spare $100 (perhaps from income) at the beginning of each month ($1200 total)
For Q2 (when to buy the dip), I've worked through 1%, 2%, 3%, 4%, 5%, 6%, 7% triggers. There were no dips of 8% or more over the past year.
Lump sum investing: 33.6844% gain on $1200 = $404.21 gain (returns from M*)
Lump sum, invest on dip (on day fund drops specified percentage): 1% dip (Oct 12-Oct 14): 29.4760% gain on $1200 = $353.71 gain 2%, 3% dips (Oct 12 - Oct 19): 31.8043% gain on $1200 = $381.65 gain 4% dip (Oct 12 - Oct 27): 33.1892% gain on $1200 = $398.27 gain 5%, 6%, 7% dips (Oct 12 - Oct 28): 38.0612% on $1200 = $456.73 gain; these are winners
To come out ahead in this time frame with a lump sum and waiting for a dip, one must wait for a 5% - 7% dip. Any faster trigger and one gains less. Any slower trigger, i.e. waiting for an 8%+ dip that never comes, and one is left holding cash and losing out on a $400 gain.
Monthly $100 investing (not waiting for dip): Oct 1: 33.68% x $100 = $33.68 gain Nov 2: 36.40% x $100 = $36.40 gain Dec 1: 23.07% x $100 = $23.07 gain Jan 4: 21.64% x $100 = $21.64 gain Feb 1: 19.13% x $100 = $19.13 gain Mar 1: 15.08% x $100 = $15.08 gain Apr 1: 11.56% x $100 = $11.56 gain May 3: 6.87% x $100 = $6.87 gain June 1: 6.47% x $100 = $6.47 gain July 1: 3.45% x $100 = $3.45 gain Aug. 2: 1.78% x $100 = $1.78 gain Sept. 1: -1.44% x $100 = -$1.44 (loss)
Total gain: $177.69 ---------------------- Monthly $100 investing, waiting for a 1% dip: Oct 1, dip Oct 12-14, 29.48% x $100 = $29.48 gain Nov 2, dip Nov 16-18, 26.40% x $100 = $26.40 gain Dec 1, dip Dec 8 -11, 22.97% x $100 = $22.97 gain Jan 4, dip Jan 8 - 15, 19.38% x $100 = $19.38 gain Feb 1, dip Feb 12-22, 15.87% x $100 = $15.87 gain Mar 1, dip March 1 - 3, 17.37% x $100 = $17.37 gain Apr 1, dip April 16 - 20, 8.39% x $100 = $8.39 gain May 3, dip May 7 - 10, 6.94% x $100 = $6.94 gain June 1, dip Jun 14 - 18, 7.30% x $100 = $7.30 gain July 1, dip July 12 - 16, 3.23% x $100 = $3.23 gain Aug 2, dip Aug 16 - 18, 1.39% x $100 = $1.39 gain Sept 1, dip Sep 2 - 10, -0.29% x $100 = - $0.29 (loss)
Total gain: $158.43 ---------------------- Monthly $100 investing, waiting for a 2% dip: Oct 1, dip Oct 12-19, 31.80% x $100 = $31.80 gain Nov 2, dip Jan 25 - 27, 19.92% x $100 = $19.92 gain Dec 1, dip Jan 25 - 27, 19.92% x $100 = $19.92 gain Jan 4, dip Jan 25 - 27, 19.92% x $100 = $19.92 gain Feb 1, dip Feb 12-25, 17.27% x $100 = $17.27 gain Mar 1, dip March 1 - 3, 17.37% x $100 = $17.37 gain Apr 1, dip May 7 - 12, 10.23% x $100 = $10.23 gain May 1, dip May 7 - 12, 10.23% x $100 = $10.23 gain June 1, dip Jun 14 - 18, 7.30% x $100 = $7.30 gain July 1, dip July 12 - 19, 4.89% x $100 = $4.89 gain Aug 2, dip Sept 2 - 14, 0.30% x $100 = $0.30 gain Sept 1, dip Sept 2 - 14, 0.30% x $100 = $0.30 gain
Total gain: $159.45 ---------------------- Monthly $100 investing, waiting for a 3% dip: Oct 1, dip Oct 12-19, 31.80% x $100 = $31.80 gain Nov 2, dip Jan 25 - 29, 21.08% x $100 = $21.08 gain Dec 1, dip Jan 25 - 29, 21.08% x $100 = $21.08 gain Jan 4, dip Jan 25 - 29, 21.08% x $100 = $21.08 gain Feb 1, dip Feb 12-26, 17.82% x $100 = $17.82 gain Mar 1, dip March 1 - 4, 19.12% x $100 = $19.12 gain Apr 1, dip May 7 - 12, 10.23% x $100 = $10.23 gain May 1, dip May 7 - 12, 10.23% x $100 = $10.23 gain June 1, dip Sept 2 - 20, 2.25% x $100 = $2.25 gain July 1, dip Sept 2 - 20, 2.25% x $100 = $2.25 gain Aug 2, dip Sept 2 - 20, 2.25% x $100 = $2.25 gain Sept 1, dip Sept 2 - 20, 2.25% x $100 = $2.25 gain
Total gain: $161.44 ---------------------- Monthly $100 investing, waiting for a 4% dip: Oct 1, dip Oct 12-27, 33.19% x $100 = $33.19 gain There are no 4% or greater dips after October, so $1100 remains uninvested
Total gain: $33.19 ---------------------- Monthly $100 investing, waiting for 5%, 6%, 7% dip: Oct 1, dip Oct 12-28, 38.06% x $100 = $38.06 gain There are no 4% or greater dips after October, so $1100 remains uninvested
@stillers: "(2) I will continue with stock allocations stretched to the top of my allocation range UNTIL the risk/reward of bond funds, CDs and/or MMkts significantly improves."
Would a rise to say 2.5 -3.0 % be enough in CD's to peak your interest ? Derf
Long dissertation there about BTD, little of which is applicable to our specific situation.
If the poster was directing all that at me, maybe ask me some simple questions first next time, like, "What is the source(s) of your BTD funds?" and "What parameters, if any, do you you set?"
My answers would have been...We keep very little cash. 2020 and 2021 BTD funds came/come from the small % of cash on hand, selling bond OEFs, and/or maturing CD proceeds. We don't set ranges for the depth of the dip. We don't buy it every time and sometimes we buy bigger chunks than others. We had no funds available for the mid-Aug 2021 dip and chose to NOT sell any bond OEFs that time around. So EVERY 2020 and 2021 dip BUY we made has a positive TR. More importantly and relevant to any analysis of this issue though, the TR of EVERY BTD trade is incrementally-to-exponentially greater than its TR had the funds stayed where they were. So, enough of all that stuff.
Only when the market falls by 5% and if I think the market is overreacting, I used to start getting interested in adding. If the draw down continues to 6-7% or more, I used to start buying. My last buy the dip was a measly 3% increase in equities on October 30, 2020, after having bought equities massively in March-April and dripping in through August. 2021 has been a year of buy the diplets (not dips). I will never understand why the same smart guys allowed the market to dip 8% in October 2020 while a 2-3% drop now is considered a buying opportunity. The peak of economic growth rate was sometime in March and by April-May, India had already shown us what to expect from Covid variants. I am not trying to fight the market or win investing championships - I am trying to understand it to better sync with its rhythms - of course, I have been out of sync in 2021.
Since people were writing about the current "dip" (less than 4%) I used current data. I would have gone back only through 2021 except that there was no dip in 2021 worth mentioning. So I looked at a full year (12 months of monthly investing).
Since people were considering a trigger of less than 4% here, and since I'm not going to do every combo, I did only the 3% 2020 trigger comparison:
Lump sum: 17.37% gain if invested Jan 2. Lump sum: 18.22% gain if invested Feb 24th (after 4.7% drop from Feb 19):
Gains through 12/31/2020 when $100 invested on first trading day of month:
This isn't even close. BTD helped a little in Jan, Feb, Mar, and June. But in the second half of the year as the market resumed its climb, it was months until there was another noticeable dip. That was in Sept. So a lot of ground was lost by waiting months to invest more money. And with no dips worth notice after October, $200 (the Nov and Dec allocations) remained univested.
FWIW:
Jan dip was just over 3% for the dates indicated and market didn't go down further.
Feb dip was 4.7% for dates indicated and continued down in Feb for a total of over 12%, so Feb allocation would have been invested at some point regardless of the trigger.
March dipped over 12% by March 9th, so regardless of the trigger, BTD would have bought. And it would have been way too soon. The market continued to drop a total of over 28% in March before rebounding in the last week of the month.
April 1 was the end of a 6%+ decline.
May dip was 3.7% and didn't go down further.
June dip was over 7% and didn't go down further.
Sept dip was 3½% and continued to go down for a total of 9½% through the third week of Sept.
Oct dip was just 3%, but after a 1% bounce, the market resumed its decline for a total of 7½% through the end of Oct.
A diversion of sorts. Can’t help reflecting on the ‘07-‘09 “dip”. Over that approximately 18 month period I abandoned the normal allocation model. The market freefall and growing public panic began in the late summer or fall of ‘07. By the end of ‘07 I’d moved all my cash and short term stuff into equities. Damn - markets kept falling. So during the first half of ‘09 I moved all my bond funds into equities in stages. And in the second half of ‘08 I transferred all my balanced funds into aggresdive equity funds. In early 2009 I sold my domestic equity funds and moved close to 100% of assets into global equity funds (D&C / Oakmark) which had been hit harder than domestic equities had - being down around 50% from peak. In early March, and having nothing more to heave at the market, I converted about 50% of those global holdings into a Roth. I’d have converted more, but was restrained by the sum on hand available for taxes.
The markets bottomed March 9 or 10 and took off on a tear. I lucked out. It might have fallen farther. So “dipping”, if you want to call it that, worked out. But I’m now 75 instead of 61 or 62. Can’t imagine wanting to endure those 18 months again and to take the same degree of risk. And there have been market bears throughout history that persisted longer than those mere 18 months. Allocations are sweet. But when all hell breaks loose, as it did over those months, a new game plan needs to be rolled out.
@hank : +1 Remarkable memory or did you take or make notes ?! As for myself , I remember making a couple of buys on the way down & then shutting the buys down as Mr. Market kept going into a tail spin !! If working during that time ,money would have been added via 401-K.
@hank, nice summary on 2009 drawdown. As I recall, it was scary time and the pace of decline was severe. In many way, it was much worse than the 2000 tech bubble. In 2009 drawdown, there were few safe harbor except for high quality bonds and cash. Just about all asset classes declined over 30% or more. I did rebalance out of bond back into equity several times. Majority of my equity buy came from 401(K) contribution. I held on the rest until they recovered. Wish I convert more to Roth like you did.
Probably as many definitions of BTD as there are investors. Generally, it means, using weakness in an investment to lower your average price in a position.
Right or wrong, for me specifically, YMMV:
Anything short of the following moves down is market noise and/or the market breathing.
On the S&P, a worthy dip is one in which the price drops to the bottom of its trading channel (if it has one) or its 50 dma, usually in the range of a 5%-10% move, while
On an indv stock, it could be a much smaller move of a coupla %.
A 10% move down is not a dip, it is a correction. A 20% move down is not a dip, it is a bear market.
Words of course matter, and any discussion about this topic is likely the get bogged down/become meaningless until/unless discussion participants accept/understand what the other poster means by a dip.
PLEASE don't waste your time trashing/arguing/debating my definition of this concept. Your time would be better spent determining your own definition of a dip, and understanding how you can profit from buying into one.
@BaluBalu : I believe you came up with a new meaning for the word (DIPLET) ! Sorry I couldn't resist. <2021 has been a year of buy the diplets (not dips).
I'm wondering if I didn't communicate well here. I asked two simple questions, and then used data to illustrate their significance. What I didn't do was state why they matter; I only illustrated that.
1. Source of cash.
One may have cash sitting on the sidelines. That could be true cash/MMF, "near cash", cash that can be raised with modest penalties (CDs, savings bonds), or more broadly it could include any investment that underperforms equities over time. (Think "two buckets", equities and everything else.)
Excluding allocations that one treats as fairly static for whatever reasons (e.g. emergency cash, projected college expenses, health costs, risk reduction, etc.), the remainder is money sitting on the sidelines.
That has an opportunity cost. I tried to illustrate that cost by comparing putting that money to work immediately with waiting for a dip to deploy. (Lump sum comparisons.)
More times than not, investing cash when available outperforms the alternative. This is well known when the comparison is between a lump sum investing and gradually investing the money on a fixed schedule (DCA). BTD is another variant. What they provide is not superior results on average, but a measure of comfort. One is not risking all at once. One is buying at a bargain relative to a few days ago, even if it is at a higher price than a few months ago.
Alternatively, one may have a stream of cash, so that one is only able to deploy money incrementally over time. Arithmetically this is no different from a sequence of lump sum investments. But it is not viewed this way, perhaps because investors can say that they only have "a little cash" available at any given time. Analyzing a sequence of investments has the added benefit of providing more data points to consider.
2. What's the trigger, when does one buy the dip?
I suggested providing a numeric threshold, but any other objective criterion would suffice. It is not however informative to say that at time A I deployed my available cash while at time B I did not, without articulating a reason. BaluBalu questioned the objectivity of some triggers by pointing out that people let an 8% drop go by while pulling the trigger on a 3% drop.
A few pieces doing a better job of illustrating the likelihood of BTD paying off:
Buying on dips doesn’t necessarily guarantee better returns.... While you wait for a downturn, you could be missing out on significant upturns in the stock market.
[I]nvesting only on the dips, which involves some market timing, returns far less than simply buying and holding, according to Samuel Lee, investment adviser at SVRN Asset Management. ... [I[t turns out the buy-the-dip strategy would earn a third of return of a buy-and-hold strategy with much higher volatility.
Below is some hasty / lazy work for me to show myself my actual practice since covid onset and I sold off nearly everything after return to breakeven summer '20 (as I was sure covid would be this bfd hit to all markets).
- All dip buying and selling were done by feel, not by percentage or any defensible criterion other than 'ooh, ooh, it just went down pretty sharply', ... just because it eventually hit me over the head that p/e be damned, this market was just too strong and kept returning to strength, for all the reasons already mentioned by others.
- I am too chicken to figure out if buy-hold woulda been better, but I suspect so, given said unstoppable market strength.
What the below activity did was make me feel better about my fairly quick / short 'defensive' darts in and out of the traffic.
buys and sells of VON_, AOR, and/or CAPE, plus a TRP mfund
(gains; no losses; all Roth, so no tax consequence)
bot 6/11/20 and sold the next day, >1% bot 10/28/20 and sold 11/13/20, 10% bot 2/25/21 and sold 4/9/21, 7% bot 4/22/21 and sold 5/6/21, >3% bot 5/12/21 and sold 5/14/21, <3% bot 6/18/21 & 7/6/21 and sold 9/22/21, <3% bot 7/2/21 and sold 9/2/21, <1% bot 7/19/21 and sold 8/3/21, >2% bot 8/4/21 and sold 8/11-2/21, 1% bot 8/18/21 and sold 9/1/21, 5% bot 9/20/21 and sold 9/23/21, 3%
I am again now almost completely out of equities.
And of course the kick-myself revenge makeup motive going on here was to try and recoup the hundreds of thou lost by my summer 2020 selloff decisions, after the big covid dip. If I had stayed the equities course (duh) we would have enough extra now to half-forgive kids' debts to us, lavish on grandchildren education funding, replace a car and roof and such, and give way more seriously to a few charities and colleges.
Thanks for sharing your experience, David. It's no fun to get it wrong, but let's face it, we're all rolling the dice one way or another. Just trying to get the odds in our favor. Surprised you resorted to a TOTAL throw of the dice at one time, though!
I appreciate the honesty of posters acknowledging losses as well as gains: you win some, you lose some.
One theory of market timing, and let's be frank here this is timing, is that while it may not improve returns it should reduce volatility. One may not get out at the top or in at the bottom, but that's the point - one is getting a smoother ride by lopping off peaks as well as avoiding deep valleys.
But one of the articles I cited (the one quoting Sam Lee) stated that " it turns out the buy-the-dip strategy [described in the piece] would earn a third of return of a buy-and-hold strategy with much higher volatility."
Thinking that this increased volatility might just be a result of the particular trigger threshold selected, I dug up this 2021 WSJ article writing about a new study:
Although active investors tend to “chase stability”—they are trying to minimize volatility by market timing—they end up doing the exact opposite, according to the research, as they invest in stocks after past volatility is low and before future volatility is high. ... Such investors are chasing safe winners, but they’re actually getting risky losers.
It's worth contrasting this with the Fidelity page bee cited. That also talks about buying less volatile stocks. But unlike the WSJ piece that concerns active traders, the Fidelity page appears to be more about long term positioning of one's portfolio. It gives 30 year performance figures. It discusses how a defensive portfolio performs over a full market cycle as opposed to getting defensive stocks in one part of a cycle and going aggressive in another.
In the interest of full disclosure, I haven't yet read the paper discussed by the WSJ.
@Derf - Take it as a “rough approximation”. Notes on the Roth conversions still exist. But the running tally of exchanges I maintain only goes back about 3 years. The day the bottom began falling out stands out in memory as I was driving up to Michigan’s UP for a few days relaxation - maybe some early fall color. Listened to the opening salvo on Sirius.
But thanks @Derf! I like to think I have a pretty good memory.
Added note: What I tried to show through my personal experience is how difficult or perplexing a BTFD mentality can become once markets stop cooperating with the dipper (dippee?) Once cash is expended, other methods need be found to continue the dipping process - “circuitous” methods let us say.
Over time, I have read about a lot of buying strategies. E.g., DCA, BTD, etc. But I have never read an exit strategy. I think this is a secret sauce people do not share. I hope folks in this forum share their exit strategies.
I do not have an exit strategy but would like to create one or a few. So far, if I own broad market index funds, I hold them through thick and thin. If I own active funds which fall behind their category meaningfully over a year +, I will exit. When active funds start holding 10%+ in cash, I exit to a balanced fund or to a high yield bond fund as a holding place to redeploy to equity funds at a later time.
I am completely clueless about exiting individual stocks. I have had better success with entry points but not with exit points.
I appreciate the honesty of posters acknowledging losses as well as gains: you win some, you lose some.
Part of my point anyway was that over 5+ quarters I have had no losses from simply going with my gut. No repeatable or 'point-outable' skill for these repeated gains, just my sense about buying diplets, and then, surely, luck, such has been the continuing and ever-returning strength of the bull sentiment that always plows over and past dips.
Possibly, indeed probably worse outcome than buy-hold. But it is for me way less nerve-racking. I am not about to formalize it w arithmetic trigger criteria.
Who here would not bet half the house --- assuming economic and business variables stay largely the same and the current guy stays in office --- after a -20% decline? The combo of boomer and millennial greed is a Force.
Comments
I would add that there are way less outstanding shares/co's to purchase over the past 10-12 years..due to private co's having easier access to capital no need to go public, sure buybacks, different less capital intensive co's such as software based need less capital so no rush to go to market, etc.
So would it be wrong to say that this is an "inflationary scenario" causing the market to continusouly rise due to supply/demand....more money chasing less product....
"Transitionary"...who knows??
Baseball Fan
Yes, markets usually go up. It may well be that all the reasons suggested here and elsewhere (like the millennials inheriting trillions and the Fed being on our side) will be enough to keep the beast climbing higher.
However, to borrow a lovely phrase from a lovely poem by Andrew Marvell …
“But at my back I always hear … This and This
Yes, several of those factors I posted will likely be there for years, possibly beyond my remaining number.
What's it all mean, to me at least?
(1) It seems likely those and other positive market factors will collectively act to possibly limit/reduce the number, severity and/or duration of corrections and bear markets.
(2) I will continue with stock allocations stretched to the top of my allocation range UNTIL the risk/reward of bond funds, CDs and/or MMkts significantly improves.
(3) I will continue to BTD until it stops working.
YMMV.
Would a rise to say 2.5 -3.0 % be enough in CD's to peak your interest ?
Derf
1. Where does the cash come from?
2. When does one pull the trigger, i.e. how much does the dip need to be to buy?
The examples below are not intended to "prove" that BTD doesn't work. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. Obviously if one waits for too large a dip before buying, one is stuck holding cash forever. And if one pulls the trigger on small dips, one risks losing a little bit on most buys - there are frequent small dips that don't bring the market back down to below where you started.
So I'm curious about how people choose their thresholds and where they get their cash.
Here are some sample scenarios starting on Oct 1, 2020 (roughly a year ago), comparing BTD with "buy when cash is available". I use VFIAX as the investment vehicle and market proxy. Red font indicates longer delays (more than a month) before investing on a dip.
For Q1 (where does the cash come from), I have worked through two hypotheticals:
a) One starts with $1200 on Oct 1
b) One has a spare $100 (perhaps from income) at the beginning of each month ($1200 total)
For Q2 (when to buy the dip), I've worked through 1%, 2%, 3%, 4%, 5%, 6%, 7% triggers. There were no dips of 8% or more over the past year.
Lump sum investing: 33.6844% gain on $1200 = $404.21 gain (returns from M*)
Lump sum, invest on dip (on day fund drops specified percentage):
1% dip (Oct 12-Oct 14): 29.4760% gain on $1200 = $353.71 gain
2%, 3% dips (Oct 12 - Oct 19): 31.8043% gain on $1200 = $381.65 gain
4% dip (Oct 12 - Oct 27): 33.1892% gain on $1200 = $398.27 gain
5%, 6%, 7% dips (Oct 12 - Oct 28): 38.0612% on $1200 = $456.73 gain; these are winners
To come out ahead in this time frame with a lump sum and waiting for a dip, one must wait for a 5% - 7% dip. Any faster trigger and one gains less. Any slower trigger, i.e. waiting for an 8%+ dip that never comes, and one is left holding cash and losing out on a $400 gain.
Monthly $100 investing (not waiting for dip):
Oct 1: 33.68% x $100 = $33.68 gain
Nov 2: 36.40% x $100 = $36.40 gain
Dec 1: 23.07% x $100 = $23.07 gain
Jan 4: 21.64% x $100 = $21.64 gain
Feb 1: 19.13% x $100 = $19.13 gain
Mar 1: 15.08% x $100 = $15.08 gain
Apr 1: 11.56% x $100 = $11.56 gain
May 3: 6.87% x $100 = $6.87 gain
June 1: 6.47% x $100 = $6.47 gain
July 1: 3.45% x $100 = $3.45 gain
Aug. 2: 1.78% x $100 = $1.78 gain
Sept. 1: -1.44% x $100 = -$1.44 (loss)
Total gain: $177.69
----------------------
Monthly $100 investing, waiting for a 1% dip:
Oct 1, dip Oct 12-14, 29.48% x $100 = $29.48 gain
Nov 2, dip Nov 16-18, 26.40% x $100 = $26.40 gain
Dec 1, dip Dec 8 -11, 22.97% x $100 = $22.97 gain
Jan 4, dip Jan 8 - 15, 19.38% x $100 = $19.38 gain
Feb 1, dip Feb 12-22, 15.87% x $100 = $15.87 gain
Mar 1, dip March 1 - 3, 17.37% x $100 = $17.37 gain
Apr 1, dip April 16 - 20, 8.39% x $100 = $8.39 gain
May 3, dip May 7 - 10, 6.94% x $100 = $6.94 gain
June 1, dip Jun 14 - 18, 7.30% x $100 = $7.30 gain
July 1, dip July 12 - 16, 3.23% x $100 = $3.23 gain
Aug 2, dip Aug 16 - 18, 1.39% x $100 = $1.39 gain
Sept 1, dip Sep 2 - 10, -0.29% x $100 = - $0.29 (loss)
Total gain: $158.43
----------------------
Monthly $100 investing, waiting for a 2% dip:
Oct 1, dip Oct 12-19, 31.80% x $100 = $31.80 gain
Nov 2, dip Jan 25 - 27, 19.92% x $100 = $19.92 gain
Dec 1, dip Jan 25 - 27, 19.92% x $100 = $19.92 gain
Jan 4, dip Jan 25 - 27, 19.92% x $100 = $19.92 gain
Feb 1, dip Feb 12-25, 17.27% x $100 = $17.27 gain
Mar 1, dip March 1 - 3, 17.37% x $100 = $17.37 gain
Apr 1, dip May 7 - 12, 10.23% x $100 = $10.23 gain
May 1, dip May 7 - 12, 10.23% x $100 = $10.23 gain
June 1, dip Jun 14 - 18, 7.30% x $100 = $7.30 gain
July 1, dip July 12 - 19, 4.89% x $100 = $4.89 gain
Aug 2, dip Sept 2 - 14, 0.30% x $100 = $0.30 gain
Sept 1, dip Sept 2 - 14, 0.30% x $100 = $0.30 gain
Total gain: $159.45
----------------------
Monthly $100 investing, waiting for a 3% dip:
Oct 1, dip Oct 12-19, 31.80% x $100 = $31.80 gain
Nov 2, dip Jan 25 - 29, 21.08% x $100 = $21.08 gain
Dec 1, dip Jan 25 - 29, 21.08% x $100 = $21.08 gain
Jan 4, dip Jan 25 - 29, 21.08% x $100 = $21.08 gain
Feb 1, dip Feb 12-26, 17.82% x $100 = $17.82 gain
Mar 1, dip March 1 - 4, 19.12% x $100 = $19.12 gain
Apr 1, dip May 7 - 12, 10.23% x $100 = $10.23 gain
May 1, dip May 7 - 12, 10.23% x $100 = $10.23 gain
June 1, dip Sept 2 - 20, 2.25% x $100 = $2.25 gain
July 1, dip Sept 2 - 20, 2.25% x $100 = $2.25 gain
Aug 2, dip Sept 2 - 20, 2.25% x $100 = $2.25 gain
Sept 1, dip Sept 2 - 20, 2.25% x $100 = $2.25 gain
Total gain: $161.44
----------------------
Monthly $100 investing, waiting for a 4% dip:
Oct 1, dip Oct 12-27, 33.19% x $100 = $33.19 gain
There are no 4% or greater dips after October, so $1100 remains uninvested
Total gain: $33.19
----------------------
Monthly $100 investing, waiting for 5%, 6%, 7% dip:
Oct 1, dip Oct 12-28, 38.06% x $100 = $38.06 gain
There are no 4% or greater dips after October, so $1100 remains uninvested
Total gain: $38.06
Thank you in advance , Derf
If the poster was directing all that at me, maybe ask me some simple questions first next time, like, "What is the source(s) of your BTD funds?" and "What parameters, if any, do you you set?"
My answers would have been...We keep very little cash. 2020 and 2021 BTD funds came/come from the small % of cash on hand, selling bond OEFs, and/or maturing CD proceeds. We don't set ranges for the depth of the dip. We don't buy it every time and sometimes we buy bigger chunks than others. We had no funds available for the mid-Aug 2021 dip and chose to NOT sell any bond OEFs that time around. So EVERY 2020 and 2021 dip BUY we made has a positive TR. More importantly and relevant to any analysis of this issue though, the TR of EVERY BTD trade is incrementally-to-exponentially greater than its TR had the funds stayed where they were. So, enough of all that stuff.
Since people were considering a trigger of less than 4% here, and since I'm not going to do every combo, I did only the 3% 2020 trigger comparison:
Lump sum: 17.37% gain if invested Jan 2.
Lump sum: 18.22% gain if invested Feb 24th (after 4.7% drop from Feb 19):
Gains through 12/31/2020 when $100 invested on first trading day of month:
$17.37 + $17.56 + $23.36 +
$54.04 + $34.26 + $24.11 +
$21.54 + $14.80 + $7.07 +
$11.54 + $13.81 + 2.69 = $242.15
Gains through 12/31/2020 when $100 invested on the day market dips 3%+ (dip period in paren):
$18.41 (Jan 17-31) + $18.22 (Feb 19-24) + $26.03 (Mar 4 - Mar 5) +
$54.04 (Mar 26-Apr 1) + $34.66 (May 11-13) + $26.25 (June 8-11) +
$9.26 (Sept 2-3) + $9.26 (Sept 2-3) + $9.26 (Sept 2-3) +
$9.97 (Oct 12-19) + $0 (no 3% dips after Oct) + $0 (no 3% dips after Oct) = $215.36
This isn't even close. BTD helped a little in Jan, Feb, Mar, and June. But in the second half of the year as the market resumed its climb, it was months until there was another noticeable dip. That was in Sept. So a lot of ground was lost by waiting months to invest more money. And with no dips worth notice after October, $200 (the Nov and Dec allocations) remained univested.
FWIW:
The markets bottomed March 9 or 10 and took off on a tear. I lucked out. It might have fallen farther. So “dipping”, if you want to call it that, worked out. But I’m now 75 instead of 61 or 62. Can’t imagine wanting to endure those 18 months again and to take the same degree of risk. And there have been market bears throughout history that persisted longer than those mere 18 months. Allocations are sweet. But when all hell breaks loose, as it did over those months, a new game plan needs to be rolled out.
As for myself , I remember making a couple of buys on the way down & then shutting the buys down as Mr. Market kept going into a tail spin !! If working during that time ,money would have been added via 401-K.
Enjoying the weather, Derf
Right or wrong, for me specifically, YMMV:
Anything short of the following moves down is market noise and/or the market breathing.
On the S&P, a worthy dip is one in which the price drops to the bottom of its trading channel (if it has one) or its 50 dma, usually in the range of a 5%-10% move, while
On an indv stock, it could be a much smaller move of a coupla %.
A 10% move down is not a dip, it is a correction.
A 20% move down is not a dip, it is a bear market.
Words of course matter, and any discussion about this topic is likely the get bogged down/become meaningless until/unless discussion participants accept/understand what the other poster means by a dip.
PLEASE don't waste your time trashing/arguing/debating my definition of this concept. Your time would be better spent determining your own definition of a dip, and understanding how you can profit from buying into one.
1. Source of cash.
One may have cash sitting on the sidelines. That could be true cash/MMF, "near cash", cash that can be raised with modest penalties (CDs, savings bonds), or more broadly it could include any investment that underperforms equities over time. (Think "two buckets", equities and everything else.)
Excluding allocations that one treats as fairly static for whatever reasons (e.g. emergency cash, projected college expenses, health costs, risk reduction, etc.), the remainder is money sitting on the sidelines.
That has an opportunity cost. I tried to illustrate that cost by comparing putting that money to work immediately with waiting for a dip to deploy. (Lump sum comparisons.)
More times than not, investing cash when available outperforms the alternative. This is well known when the comparison is between a lump sum investing and gradually investing the money on a fixed schedule (DCA). BTD is another variant. What they provide is not superior results on average, but a measure of comfort. One is not risking all at once. One is buying at a bargain relative to a few days ago, even if it is at a higher price than a few months ago.
Alternatively, one may have a stream of cash, so that one is only able to deploy money incrementally over time. Arithmetically this is no different from a sequence of lump sum investments. But it is not viewed this way, perhaps because investors can say that they only have "a little cash" available at any given time. Analyzing a sequence of investments has the added benefit of providing more data points to consider.
2. What's the trigger, when does one buy the dip?
I suggested providing a numeric threshold, but any other objective criterion would suffice. It is not however informative to say that at time A I deployed my available cash while at time B I did not, without articulating a reason. BaluBalu questioned the objectivity of some triggers by pointing out that people let an 8% drop go by while pulling the trigger on a 3% drop.
A few pieces doing a better job of illustrating the likelihood of BTD paying off: WaPo, Sept 24, 2021: In the long run, slow and steady stock-buying easily beats trying to time market dips, experts say
MarketWatch, May 23, 2017: Why a buy-the-dip stock-market strategy is inferior to buy-and-hold
MarketWatch, Sept 21, 2021 (updated Sept 25): Opinion:‘Buy the dip’ is a horrible stock-market strategy — and these charts prove it
Reiterating something I started with: BTD sometimes does better. But that doesn't mean it does better on average. A graph from the last cited piece:
To wit, rhetorically,
What is the dip definition in use? 2%? 5%? 10%?
What dip is the person measuring? S&P? Nasdaq? The RUT? AMZN, AAPL or MSFT stock? ARKK?
The results will ALL be at least slightly different, and many will be significantly different.
We don't set ranges for the depth of the dip
To wit, rhetorically
Indeed. No substance.
- All dip buying and selling were done by feel, not by percentage or any defensible criterion other than 'ooh, ooh, it just went down pretty sharply', ... just because it eventually hit me over the head that p/e be damned, this market was just too strong and kept returning to strength, for all the reasons already mentioned by others.
- I am too chicken to figure out if buy-hold woulda been better, but I suspect so, given said unstoppable market strength.
What the below activity did was make me feel better about my fairly quick / short 'defensive' darts in and out of the traffic.
buys and sells of VON_, AOR, and/or CAPE, plus a TRP mfund
(gains; no losses; all Roth, so no tax consequence)
bot 6/11/20 and sold the next day, >1%
bot 10/28/20 and sold 11/13/20, 10%
bot 2/25/21 and sold 4/9/21, 7%
bot 4/22/21 and sold 5/6/21, >3%
bot 5/12/21 and sold 5/14/21, <3%
bot 6/18/21 & 7/6/21 and sold 9/22/21, <3%
bot 7/2/21 and sold 9/2/21, <1%
bot 7/19/21 and sold 8/3/21, >2%
bot 8/4/21 and sold 8/11-2/21, 1%
bot 8/18/21 and sold 9/1/21, 5%
bot 9/20/21 and sold 9/23/21, 3%
I am again now almost completely out of equities.
And of course the kick-myself revenge makeup motive going on here was to try and recoup the hundreds of thou lost by my summer 2020 selloff decisions, after the big covid dip. If I had stayed the equities course (duh) we would have enough extra now to half-forgive kids' debts to us, lavish on grandchildren education funding, replace a car and roof and such, and give way more seriously to a few charities and colleges.
oh, more than once, in terms of bailing out of equities
(just too damn high)
all of the above are successes, obvs, but the largest was only perhaps a quarter of the our total egg
large enough for me
One theory of market timing, and let's be frank here this is timing, is that while it may not improve returns it should reduce volatility. One may not get out at the top or in at the bottom, but that's the point - one is getting a smoother ride by lopping off peaks as well as avoiding deep valleys.
But one of the articles I cited (the one quoting Sam Lee) stated that " it turns out the buy-the-dip strategy [described in the piece] would earn a third of return of a buy-and-hold strategy with much higher volatility."
Thinking that this increased volatility might just be a result of the particular trigger threshold selected, I dug up this 2021 WSJ article writing about a new study: WSJ, Jan 23, 2021 A New Reason Investors Shouldn’t Try to Time the Stock Market
It's worth contrasting this with the Fidelity page bee cited. That also talks about buying less volatile stocks. But unlike the WSJ piece that concerns active traders, the Fidelity page appears to be more about long term positioning of one's portfolio. It gives 30 year performance figures. It discusses how a defensive portfolio performs over a full market cycle as opposed to getting defensive stocks in one part of a cycle and going aggressive in another.
In the interest of full disclosure, I haven't yet read the paper discussed by the WSJ.
But thanks @Derf! I like to think I have a pretty good memory.
Added note: What I tried to show through my personal experience is how difficult or perplexing a BTFD mentality can become once markets stop cooperating with the dipper (dippee?) Once cash is expended, other methods need be found to continue the dipping process - “circuitous” methods let us say.
Over time, I have read about a lot of buying strategies. E.g., DCA, BTD, etc. But I have never read an exit strategy. I think this is a secret sauce people do not share. I hope folks in this forum share their exit strategies.
I do not have an exit strategy but would like to create one or a few. So far, if I own broad market index funds, I hold them through thick and thin. If I own active funds which fall behind their category meaningfully over a year +, I will exit. When active funds start holding 10%+ in cash, I exit to a balanced fund or to a high yield bond fund as a holding place to redeploy to equity funds at a later time.
I am completely clueless about exiting individual stocks. I have had better success with entry points but not with exit points.
0-5% diplet
5-10% dip
10-20% correction
>20% bear market
+/- a couple of decimals.
Possibly, indeed probably worse outcome than buy-hold. But it is for me way less nerve-racking. I am not about to formalize it w arithmetic trigger criteria.
Who here would not bet half the house --- assuming economic and business variables stay largely the same and the current guy stays in office --- after a -20% decline? The combo of boomer and millennial greed is a Force.