By Gabriele Denaro · Published 20 September 2026 · Updated 6 October 2026
Timing the market means trying to be out before a fall and back in before a rise. To profit you must be right twice: when to leave and when to return. The first is hard. The second is harder, because a recovery often begins while the news is still bad.
J.P. Morgan's 2026 Guide to Retirement looks at the S&P 500 between 2 January 2006 and 31 December 2025. $10,000 invested for those twenty years grew to $80,619, an annualized return of 11.0%. Missing only the ten best days, it grew to $35,866, or 6.6% a year, and missing the twenty best days left $21,177. Ten days out of roughly five thousand trading days cost more than half of the final result. The calculation is hypothetical and before fees and taxes.
The same guide notes that six of the ten best days came within two weeks of the ten worst days. Rebounds tend to arrive in the middle of the most frightening stretches, which is exactly when many people step out. A plan that sells in panic is likely to miss them.
This kind of analysis is one-sided: it removes only the best days. If you removed the ten worst days instead, the result would be far better, and a perfect timer would capture that. The point is not that missing the good days is a realistic scenario. It is that nobody is told in advance which days are which, so avoiding the bad ones means risking the good ones as well.
The alternative is a plan that does not depend on forecasting: invest regularly on a schedule, keep an emergency fund so you never have to sell in a downturn to pay a bill, and check your portfolio rarely enough that a bad week does not feel like a decision. Past results do not guarantee future ones, and this is general information, not a recommendation.
General educational information, not personal financial, tax or legal advice. It may be incomplete or out of date. Terms of use.