Valuation-Informed Indexing #614: Market Timing Needs to Become a Habit, Like Brushing One’s Teeth or Eating Balanced Meals

I’ve posted Entry #614 to my weekly Valuation-Informed Indexing column at the Value Walk site. It’s called Market Timing Needs to Become a Habit, Like Brushing One’s Teeth or Eating Balanced Meals.

Juicy Excerpt: Market timing has become controversial because there was a time when it was not properly understood. There was an academic construct (The Efficient Market Hypothesis) that suggested that investors set stock prices rationally and that therefore market timing is not required. Robert Shiller published research in 1981 showing that the market is NOT efficient and, if we all were thinking clearly, we all would have become market timers at that time. But our understanding of this matter has become terribly confused and so there are experts in the field who question the need and even the value of market timing to this day. If we are going to persuade millions of investors to take up the practice, we are going to need to simplify how it is done.