Don't time the market.
— or, the most boring strategy that quietly wins
The two ways
Lump sum: put all the money in at once. : split the same amount across many smaller purchases over time. The first commits you to one specific price. The second averages out whatever the market throws at you. Both end up holding the same total invested — they just got there differently.
Watch the two strategies fight
Pick a market scenario. The two lines below are the value of your over twelve months — one with a single $12,000 purchase on day one, the other with twelve $1,000 purchases. Watch how the same total amount ends up worth wildly different things, depending on what the market did along the way.
What this is really for
Over the very long run, lump sum tends to win on paper — markets go up more often than they go down. But that statistic hides the part that breaks people. The hardest moment in investing is putting in $50,000 in a single click, watching it lose 30%, and not selling. isn't really about . It's about not blowing yourself up.
Time in the market beats timing the market.
Studies that compare the worst possible market timer (always invests at the peak) against a steady investor over decades show a smaller gap than you'd expect. The bigger gap, by far, is between either of them and the person who waited for 'the right moment' and never got in at all.