Here bottom, bottom.  Where are you?????

Why is it that so many in the financial industry obsess over market bottoms or market tops?

Does it really matter if one can predict the timing of an exact turn in market direction?  Is there anything to gain by doing so?

With all the attention of the media and the pundits both, one would think there would be immense riches awaiting those who can predict such things with stock market timing.

Aside from the little problem of really being able to predict the exact time a market turns, doing so really does not add up to much.  At the end of the day, market timing does not really work, as such investors invariably miss opportunity by waiting too long or moving too quickly.

For example, I suspect many of you readers would have never guessed that on the Monday following Bear Stearns' dramatic collapse, the market would have put in a bottom.

In other words, chances are most had positioned portfolios conservatively with increases in cash and short positions.  That's unfortunate, as the market has only done one thing since that event, and that is to increase in value.

Timing is not an easy thing to do, so why bother?  Even when correct, there is a very good chance that a mistake will be made in the immediate aftermath.

Take, for example, the bear market conditions of 2002.  I remember those days very clearly as it was a special time for me and the launch of my own newsletter, The Rational Investor.

In October of that year, investor fear had risen to fever pitch.  The Federal Reserve was cutting interest rates to essentially zero, and many thought we were falling over the deflation cliff (the irony today is that most look at that period as pulling the trigger on today's inflationary gun).

Nobody wanted to buy stocks, and yet a big bet on stocks with some leverage resulted in a gain of more than 50% for my model portfolio in less than 2 month's time.  Unfortunately the market retreated in the first quarter of 200,3 and much of those fantastic gains were lost.

Try as I might, I mistimed the correction by liquidating stocks in mid-December and then compounded the mistake by re-entering the market in mid-January.  I knew a correction was coming, but my attempt to time the market ultimately cost me in performance lost.

I learned my lesson and stayed aggressively long in advance of the real bull rally that began in earnest in early March.  I could have accomplished much more by simply staying invested.

Flash forward to today…