So how will you time the current market?
 

A lot of you on here have commented a lot about the stock market and have probably hundreds of times the knowledge that I have myself. I'm curious what your strategy will be in this market?

Back in 2008-2009 when the market was bottomed out (which was unknown at the time, of course, since it could have gone farther down) and I didn't have two nickels to my name (thank you, public university senior year tuition...) I remember thinking "man, if I only had $1,000 to invest in the market right NOW... or $10,000, or $20,000" so I looked at several stocks as an exercise to myself and wrote down their present asking prices at the time and how I would divy up my investment sum among them (since it was a hypothetical number anyways). Looking at that spreadsheet last month... I would have been up somewhere around 2.5x my initial investment.

Granted, this was probably from a lot of luck and naivety, but still...

I now have a few more than a couple of nickels to my (our) name and I'm wondering when would be the best time to jump in. I would probably stick to a relatively aggressive portfolio seeing as my wife and I are 27 yrs old with good paying jobs with a very low DTI ratio.

When do some of you all plan on picking up some stock and when will you take your largest bite? And of what stock/indexes/whatever?

At 27, any time is a good time to buy proven performers if you assume a 30-year-outlook.

But that said, I expect the air to be fully clean by the end of October-the first two weeks of November, based upon Q2 earnings reports.

What to buy now: dividend-yielding Blue Chips

What to buy when you think the dust clears: All the S&P Favorites.

What to avoid: energy sector will probably funky and sluggish for a while, avoid smoke-and-mirror-based stocks in your BRICK markets, and avoid having a serious gf/bf until after Valentine's Day of next year.

pick some stocks you just like. Make that dummy portfolio and track it for a month to see if your guesses were good ones.
Develope a process , that is when to buy and when to sell. All of this involves RISK....greater risk than other investments thus the potential of better returns.
Example: buy... when there is a 5% pullback in a particular stock, sell it when it goes up 5%.
Watch Mad Money, With Jim Kramer, buy a couple of his books, he is a great guru when it comes to demystifying the marketplace.
use money you can afford to loose, or at best do not need for the next few years.
consider making purchases that provide dividend month. no not buy cause the dividend is pending and try and sell after it is given....just keep a % of your portfolio mixed with what you like....including some dividend stocks. Do not look at the %, rather the actual money amount given.
best of luck, no doubt if you invest $1,000 just about anytime within a cycle or two you will be in the black, better than cd, better than mutual funds, and better than bonds....all of which are MUCH SAFER....do not worry so much what the Dow or NASDAQ numbers are, just what your stocks are doing.
I can't deal with more than 6 stocks at a time, cause each one requires research, attention, and time.
this advice is from a self taught day trader who has done this for 15 years and made better than average returns...although not every day or all the time....just over time. you will not always be right in your choices..... Finally, do not be afraid to get rid of a stinker stock....one that you were sure would gain and did not , sell, take the loss and reinvest in something else.

It's an insane bull market right now but January is a good time to invest. People sell before the end of the year for tax reasons. If you think the market is worth it then buy in Jan and hold until March at least. Markets usually rally after the New Year.

But take this into consideration, Warren Buffet buys and holds. He is not a day trader. Or you can short Oprah Winfrey and her dumb bass Weight Watchers buy. It went up purely on her buying. But look at her, her weight has been a yoyoy for years and for years she has been using WW. So, you tell me if they work. And the only way she loses weight is b/c she can hire FT cooks to cook for her ham hocks.

The pull back and double dip with the market was interesting but not sustained. Makes me wonder if that was the bull market saying OK FINE you got your correction......LET'S KEEP GOING! I was timid on things when they pulled back as I expected them to last more than the hot second they did.

You can really work it one a million ways. One I have considered is putting money aside in essentially cash accounts and waiting for market corrections and then jumping in with 2 feet. This way you limit your down side risk and maximize your gains. Then again looking at the run up to this pull back you would have missed out on a lot of gains if you just put a steady amount every month. Though you don't have that extra $$$ sitting aside when it does pull back.

So hard to call tops or bottoms in the market. If you are 27 stack as much as you can aside in solid market funds and diversify out. Watch it regularly and watch the market as you may need to re-weight your portfolio.

Buffet does buy and hold but many don't realize he only holds stocks for 3-4 years and some like Exxon less than a year! He got in at mid 80's and out in the mid 90's. I didn't follow his lead and well you know that story right now. I did call the bottom at 73ish but didn't have the cash to throw down on it.

Pinky call the new bottom on XOM. I bought at 74 before, but it seems to be dropping again. I am told to steer clear or dump my stock as it is headed to $50/share.

Is $20/barrel oil in our future? Who knows what is going to happen!

I still think 74 is a great price. It's got a lot of upstream business and hedged against the straight crude oil prices. It's possible oil could go lower and who knows what will but I can't wait to see when XOM will start picking up the belly up companies that can't survive the down turn.

I think they will be strategic and wait to pounce when the time is right. I may be totally wrong on this but I don't plan to sell this is a total buy and hold view.

Hell my mom has XOM stock that my grandfather bought back in probably the 1930/40's. Pays good dividends but should have told her to sell when XOM was hitting 52 week highs and buy back in when it fell under 80.