Dan Celia

Financial Issues

March 2018 – Q: Two years ago I pulled everything out of the market. It’s still sitting in a money market account. Is now the time to get back in?

A: With the market at an all-time high, that’s a frequent question. However, it’s never good strategy to invest based on the news. What I mean is that when news is good and improving, people naturally want to invest. And, of course, the opposite is true when we hear bad news.

Doing this, you are actually buying in “high” and selling “low.” Consider this: Investing well is really all about two things – timing and commitment.

Timing. If you have 10 years and you can keep your investments working for that long, invest.

Commitment. If you can’t commit to stay invested during down times and negative news cycles, stay put. No strategy is good if you bail out when there’s bad news.

But if you have a long-term perspective, decide how much you want to invest, and divide it by six – then, every month for the next six months, invest your money using “dollar cost averaging.” (Search on that term at financial issues.org, and watch the video.)

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Dan Celia has been in financial management for more than 30 years. He works closely with AFA Foundation and can be heard six days a week on AFR Talk (afr.net).

Financial Issues website
Email: dan@financialissues.org
AFA Foundation: 800-326-4543, ext 345