Start Vanguard fund now or later?

[MaxPowers]

I want to start the Vanguard retirement fund ($3000 to start) My other investments in my IRA are the S&P 500 and a bond fund. I want to do the retirement allocation fund so I can concentrate all my money into one fund.
Anyway, my question is should I just go for it, or wait and try to "time the market"? Im curious on how low it will go. The DOW is at 7988 now.

[disneysteve]

You can't time the market.

Let me repeat that louder:

YOU CAN'T TIME THE MARKET!

The Dow is at 7988. Just over a year ago, it was above 14,000. That sounds like a darn good sale to me. If you've got the money now, I say invest now.

[Broken Arrow]

What Steve said. And really, it couldn't be any clearer than that.

[disneysteve]

My other investments in my IRA are the S&P 500 and a bond fund. I want to do the retirement allocation fund so I can concentrate all my money into one fund.

On a separate note, are you going to move all of your money into the target date fund? It may not make sense otherwise. If you buy the target date fund but keep the S&P fund and bond fund, you mess with the point of the target fund, which has a controlled asset allocation. If you purposely want to overweight a particular sector, investing outside of the target fund makes sense, as long as you understand how that affects the big picture.

[tripods68]

Unless the DOW goes down to 4000, now we are all screwed for a long time.

[GREENBACK]

Unless the DOW goes down to 4000, now we are all screwed for a long time.

Please don't even say things like that

[sweeps]

It would be very painful to see my account statements if the dow goes to 4,000, but I'd sure like to buying up those cheap shares.

[red92s]

just FYI, Vanguard has one fund (their Star Fund) that only requires a $1,000 minimum investment, which you can then move to another Vanguard fund once you have $3,000.

I'll echo the sentiments above and say that, if you were considering buying a particular fund a year ago and thought it was a good investment, you should be jumping in at these prices.

[Snodog]

If the DOW goes to 4000 I will go "all in".

[vole]

Maybe market timing does work.

There are lots of sources that give results on returns of missing the top 10 trading days. Consider the results on returns of missing the worst 10 trading days.

Missing the Ten Best

The results seem to indicate that missing the worst 10 days is better than "not missing" the best 10 days. And missing both the 10 best days and the 10 worse days is still better than missing the 10 best days. Maybe that means missing it all and staying out of the market?

I don't think staying out of equities will work as inflation erodes that value of money.

Personally, I like dollar cost averaging rather than adding all the money to Vanguard at once. That way I'm not buying at the top or at the bottom.

-Dave