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Investing Mistake #9: Thinking I'll wait for the market to rise then fund my 401(k) or IRA later

You might think, "The market is down, why throw good money after bad? I have a long time to save for retirement, I can wait. The market will go up, then I can invest."

In reality, this is just another name for market timing. But what happens when you try to time the markets? Suppose you miss the best six months. Or 12, or 18. You're going to miss a ton of performance.

OK, you say, but what if you miss the worst months or days? I went back and looked at 35 years of daily Dow Jones returns and ranked them by the best to the worst. Obviously if you missed the 20 worst days, the returns would quite good. If you missed the 20 best days, your returns were lousy. But did you know that almost half of those best and worst days were right next to each other? Some of the worst days were followed immediately by the best days, and vice versa. Out of those 40 best and worst days, 19 were last fall.

The bottom line is market-timing is pretty much impossible. No one can see the future, and you have to be right twice every time you try — getting out and getting in at the right times. I say it's not timing the market that matters, it's time in the market.

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