Take a look at this attachment or what is pasted below courtesy of IFA.com. 20 years of S&P 500 returns were analyzed, and the findings were: missing just a handful of days of returns drastically impacted returns. We’re just not going to consistently guess right and avoid the losing days, but if we try, we subject ourselves to missing the good days, too. And even just missing the 5 best days OUT OF OVER 5,000 days took the return from 9.22% down to 7%.
The moral of the story is: stay invested every single day and grab the market’s return, over time it’s a good return and it will build wealth for your retirement portfolio. But when you play the market timing game, the odds aren’t in your favor that you’ll consistently guess right, and when it comes to your retirement you don’t want it to be a guessing game.