[glenngillen]

Timing is everything, but doubly so when you're trying to take a short position. My favorite quote from that movie is when Burry get's confronted by one of his major investors who comes in demanding his money back:

"I'm not wrong, I'm just early"... "IT'S THE SAME THING!"

The story obviously works out well for them in the end. But all it would have taken was the market to hold out just a little longer or investors wanting enough of their money back just a little earlier and they would have all taken a bath.

The markets are littered with stories of things that don't make sense, I semi-regularly get motivated to actually put my money where my mouth is. And in the vast majority of cases I end up getting the timing wrong by a month or two, which in the end is still just getting it wrong. There's no reward for being just a little bit wrong. It's also not realistic to look back at historical events and think you'd have been able to predict the timing with the required accuracy if only you had the data.