Last week I posted the importance of understanding that markets move quickly. What could happen to your portfolio if you miss just a handful of the days when the market moves sharply up? The answer is a significant reduction in your portfolio’s value. And nobody knows when those sharp up (and down) days are going to happen, so the only way we can participate in those days is to be invested every single day. In doing that, we’ll take the bad with the good – fortunately there’s a lot less bad than good – but the key thing is that we’ll ensure we participate in every up day because if we miss just one or a handful of the best up days the ramifications are drastic. The graphic below shows the hypothetical growth of $1,000 invested in US stocks in 1970 and what would be the outcome if you stayed invested every single day, if you missed just the one best day (out of >12,500 days), and so on…
