Is Buy and Hold Dead?

You can see this idea expressed in many, many articles these days.

Market Timing: getting in and out of the stock market in order to enhance returns by sidestepping downturns. Depending on the quality of the timing, can produce much higher or much lower than market returns

Buy and Hold: staying in the stock market through thick and thin. Produces market returns less expenses.

Market timing is a very attractive concept but the articles I've seen were disappointing since they had no practical suggestions for when to exit or reenter the stock market. There's a reason for that, it's impossible to do on a consistent basis. In my 37 years of stock market experience, I have not yet found anyone who could consistently time the stock market. Many have tried, all the ones I know of have eventually failed to beat buy and hold returns.

The bottom line for me is that, to borrow a phrase, buy and hold is a terrible form of investing, it's just better than all the others.

There's a lot to say about this important topic. What's your opinion?


More later.