[maigret]

> you can certainly time the market using "buy and hold", by waiting for the right moment to buy.

Yes that is timing the market because you wait for a certain time point, as opposed to just buy once you have enough liquidity.

> Dollar-cost averaging is a form of timing the market

No it’s not. It’s like saying passive is a form of active investment because some group of people pick the stocks that come into an index. Timing the market is betting on a given change, while dollar cost averaging is based on empirical analysis and is independent of the events the investor thinks will happen.

I mean the difference is actually simple and clear. One investor is telling “I bet something will happen soon“, the other “I have no idea what will happen”. It could hardly be more clear cut.

[shrimpx]

There’s a contradiction in your analysis: you have no idea what will happen, yet make decisions guided by empirical analysis. You’re literally making a bet that the future is likely to behave in patterns according to the empirical analysis. How is that not a form of timing?

I think the confusion arises when we split hairs, that timing is predicting explicit events, or on a short time scale. But I want to zoom out: making decisions based on large scale patterns and trends, including “the s&p always goes up over a long time”, or “the future tends to behave like the past”, (things that are absolutely not guaranteed to happen, and require belief and betting), is a form of timing.