I think timing the market doesn't work, when you look at short term. Short term is hard to define. But say, a target from a few months to even 3-4 years is shor

I think timing the market doesn't work, when you look at short term. Short term is hard to define. But say, a target from a few months to even 3-4 years is short term. And long term say 10-15 years or more. After seeing a few crashes, eg. one in 2000 (dot com bust) and then later in 2007 (real estate crash), and you go back in history and see some more. But after living through a few crashes, you can draw the common trait of them, and that is market wide gloom and doom. When the sentiment is very low. So, IMHO, its not bad to wait for those kind of crashes, and then invest. And the market does bounce back in a few years (if we look at history). Of course there's always a first time for anything, and its possible that it never does come up. But then you are screwed anyway, if you invest by any strategy. A safeguard for that is classic not all eggs in a basket. So what's wrong in timing this way? And this heuristic matches with all the classic investment advise buy low and sell high. My personal translation to that is buy, when all the TV channels are saying it will never come up, and don't buy when most TV channels are saying its going to go up. The latter has been the case, for past 2 years, in my geography at least.