The Dow hit its record...scared to invest

[rennigade]

delete

[humandraydel]

The moral of the story never changes. Stop trying to time the market. Stop trying to guess when the market has peaked or when it has bottomed out. Just keep investing consistently over time.

Another good thread to revisit is the Fiscal Cliff thread. Back in December a lot of people were ready to sell due to the Fiscal Cliff. We're now up...what, 15 or 20%?

[Petunia 100]

One thing you do want to look at though, when stocks have been surging or slumping, is re-balancing.
I just did some of that this morning. I sold some stocks and bought some bonds to get back to my target asset allocation.

[Goldy]

I found myself in a similar situation when I had to toss a lump sum into our Roths this year in March when we found out that we qualified. Since I had to invest the money before April 15th I tossed it in there but I didn't want to and wouldn't have if I had a choice because I was timid about the high numbers. Good thing I did! Just goes to show that market timing is not something for me.

[bjl584]

I started investing when I graduated college. At the time, the DOW was at an all time high of around 10,000. Had I been scared to invest back then I wouldn't have a portfolio approaching a value of a quarter million dollars today.

[dczech09]

The whole "OMG the market is at it highest ever" argument is pretty dumb if you ask me. That assumes that the market has a "ceiling" which would imply that our economy in general has a "ceiling."

After the housing meltdown, people thought that the DJIA would never see 12,000 again. It has only been a few years and it has broken 15,000.

Whenever the market is in rough shape, people argue that the market will never go any higher again. Whenever the market is in great shape, people argue that the market will never go any higher.

There is always a reason not to do something, and that is definitely the case when it comes to START investing. Bottom line: there is no better timing than today. I would have said the same thing back in September of 2008.