Sept 25th Episode:

Risk and opportunity go hand in hand. Risk is more important than opportunity because you can often manage risk while opportunity merely presents itself to be considered.

Thanks, Observant1. Those would be my reasons as well, except 4.
Most of the Buy strategies I read about have an element of Price or are Price based. I would like to hear about Sell strategies that are Price based too. For example, no more than 5% loss, sell 25% of holding for each 20% gain in a year, etc.

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1683471/000089418921006883/badetf485a.htm
Excerpt:
Principal Investment Strategies
The Fund uses a passive management (or indexing) approach to seek to track the performance, before fees and expenses, of the Index. The Index was developed and owned by Thematic Investments, LLC and is administered by EQM Indexes LLC (the “Index Provider”).
EQM BAD Index
The Index is a rules-based index that seeks to provide exposure to a portfolio of (i) betting or gambling companies, (ii) alcohol and cannabis companies, and/or (iii) pharmaceutical companies.

T. Rowe Price Intermediate Tax-Free High Yield Fund:
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1608530/000174177321002904/c497k.htm
T. Rowe Price Dynamic Credit Fund:
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/313212/000174177321002902/c497k.htm
T. Rowe Price Global High Income Bond Fund:
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/313212/000174177321002903/c497k.htm
T. Rowe Price Emerging Markets Bond Fund:
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/313212/000174177321002906/c497k.htm
T. Rowe Price International Bond Fund:
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/313212/000174177321002905/c497k.htm
T. Rowe Price Emerging Markets Local Currency Bond Fund:
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/313212/000174177321002911/c497k.htm
T. Rowe Price Tax-Free Short-Intermediate Fund, Inc.
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/730200/000174177321002913/c497k.htm

My definitions for market drawdowns - probably correspond to most people’s
0-5% diplet
5-10% dip
10-20% correction
>20% bear market
+/- a couple of decimals.

Who here would not bet half the house --- assuming economic and business variables stay largely the same and the current guy stays in office --- after a -20% decline? The combo of boomer and millennial greed is a Force.

I appreciate the honesty of posters acknowledging losses as well as gains: you win some, you lose some.

Part of my point anyway was that over 5+ quarters I have had no losses from simply going with my gut. No repeatable or 'point-outable' skill for these repeated gains, just my sense about buying diplets, and then, surely, luck, such has been the continuing and ever-returning strength of the bull sentiment that always plows over and past dips.
Possibly, indeed probably worse outcome than buy-hold. But it is for me way less nerve-racking. I am not about to formalize it w arithmetic trigger criteria.

My definitions for market draw downs - probably correspond to most people’s
0-5% diplet
5-10% dip
10-20% correction
>20% bear market
+/- a couple of decimals.

Both of these gents have come under fire recently for trades they made while serving on the Federal Reserve. As Barron’s Randall Forsyth noted a couple weeks ago, it’s easier to succeed in investing if you happen to be “in the room where it happens.” This is interesting. Now starts the hunt for replacements. If you think the Federal Reserve has an effect on your investments, this is a story worth following.
Robert Kaplan’s afternoon announcement followed closely on the heels of Eric Rosengren‘s announcement this morning.
Story

I appreciate the honesty of posters acknowledging losses as well as gains: you win some, you lose some.
One theory of market timing, and let's be frank here this is timing, is that while it may not improve returns it should reduce volatility. One may not get out at the top or in at the bottom, but that's the point - one is getting a smoother ride by lopping off peaks as well as avoiding deep valleys.
But one of the articles I cited (the one quoting Sam Lee) stated that " it turns out the buy-the-dip strategy [described in the piece] would earn a third of return of a buy-and-hold strategy with much higher volatility."
Thinking that this increased volatility might just be a result of the particular trigger threshold selected, I dug up this 2021 WSJ article writing about a new study:

Although active investors tend to “chase stability”—they are trying to minimize volatility by market timing—they end up doing the exact opposite, according to the research, as they invest in stocks after past volatility is low and before future volatility is high. ... Such investors are chasing safe winners, but they’re actually getting risky losers.

WSJ, Jan 23, 2021 A New Reason Investors Shouldn’t Try to Time the Stock Market
It's worth contrasting this with the Fidelity page bee cited. That also talks about buying less volatile stocks. But unlike the WSJ piece that concerns active traders, the Fidelity page appears to be more about long term positioning of one's portfolio. It gives 30 year performance figures. It discusses how a defensive portfolio performs over a full market cycle as opposed to getting defensive stocks in one part of a cycle and going aggressive in another.
In the interest of full disclosure, I haven't yet read the paper discussed by the WSJ.

Below is some hasty / lazy work for me to show myself my actual practice since covid onset and I sold off nearly everything after return to breakeven summer '20 (as I was sure covid would be this bfd hit to all markets).
- All dip buying and selling were done by feel, not by percentage or any defensible criterion other than 'ooh, ooh, it just went down pretty sharply', ... just because it eventually hit me over the head that p/e be damned, this market was just too strong and kept returning to strength, for all the reasons already mentioned by others.
- I am too chicken to figure out if buy-hold woulda been better, but I suspect so, given said unstoppable market strength.
What the below activity did was make me feel better about my fairly quick / short 'defensive' darts in and out of the traffic.
buys and sells of VON_, AOR, and/or CAPE, plus a TRP mfund
(gains; no losses; all Roth, so no tax consequence)
bot 6/11/20 and sold the next day, >1%
bot 10/28/20 and sold 11/13/20, 10%
bot 2/25/21 and sold 4/9/21, 7%
bot 4/22/21 and sold 5/6/21, >3%
bot 5/12/21 and sold 5/14/21, <3%
bot 6/18/21 & 7/6/21 and sold 9/22/21, <3%
bot 7/2/21 and sold 9/2/21, <1%
bot 7/19/21 and sold 8/3/21, >2%
bot 8/4/21 and sold 8/11-2/21, 1%
bot 8/18/21 and sold 9/1/21, 5%
bot 9/20/21 and sold 9/23/21, 3%
I am again now almost completely out of equities.
And of course the kick-myself revenge makeup motive going on here was to try and recoup the hundreds of thou lost by my summer 2020 selloff decisions, after the big covid dip. If I had stayed the equities course (duh) we would have enough extra now to half-forgive kids' debts to us, lavish on grandchildren education funding, replace a car and roof and such, and give way more seriously to a few charities and colleges.

What is the dip definition in use? 2%? 5%? 10%?
We don't set ranges for the depth of the dip
To wit, rhetorically
Indeed. No substance.

Really an exercise in futility here. Massive over generalization of this kind of stuff gets an investor nowhere close to an actionable strategy.
To wit, rhetorically,
What is the dip definition in use? 2%? 5%? 10%?
What dip is the person measuring? S&P? Nasdaq? The RUT? AMZN, AAPL or MSFT stock? ARKK?
The results will ALL be at least slightly different, and many will be significantly different.

I'm wondering if I didn't communicate well here. I asked two simple questions, and then used data to illustrate their significance. What I didn't do was state why they matter; I only illustrated that.
1. Source of cash.
One may have cash sitting on the sidelines. That could be true cash/MMF, "near cash", cash that can be raised with modest penalties (CDs, savings bonds), or more broadly it could include any investment that underperforms equities over time. (Think "two buckets", equities and everything else.)
Excluding allocations that one treats as fairly static for whatever reasons (e.g. emergency cash, projected college expenses, health costs, risk reduction, etc.), the remainder is money sitting on the sidelines.
That has an opportunity cost. I tried to illustrate that cost by comparing putting that money to work immediately with waiting for a dip to deploy. (Lump sum comparisons.)
More times than not, investing cash when available outperforms the alternative. This is well known when the comparison is between a lump sum investing and gradually investing the money on a fixed schedule (DCA). BTD is another variant. What they provide is not superior results on average, but a measure of comfort. One is not risking all at once. One is buying at a bargain relative to a few days ago, even if it is at a higher price than a few months ago.
Alternatively, one may have a stream of cash, so that one is only able to deploy money incrementally over time. Arithmetically this is no different from a sequence of lump sum investments. But it is not viewed this way, perhaps because investors can say that they only have "a little cash" available at any given time. Analyzing a sequence of investments has the added benefit of providing more data points to consider.
2. What's the trigger, when does one buy the dip?
I suggested providing a numeric threshold, but any other objective criterion would suffice. It is not however informative to say that at time A I deployed my available cash while at time B I did not, without articulating a reason. BaluBalu questioned the objectivity of some triggers by pointing out that people let an 8% drop go by while pulling the trigger on a 3% drop.
A few pieces doing a better job of illustrating the likelihood of BTD paying off:

Buying on dips doesn’t necessarily guarantee better returns.... While you wait for a downturn, you could be missing out on significant upturns in the stock market.

WaPo, Sept 24, 2021: In the long run, slow and steady stock-buying easily beats trying to time market dips, experts say

[I]nvesting only on the dips, which involves some market timing, returns far less than simply buying and holding, according to Samuel Lee, investment adviser at SVRN Asset Management. ... [I[t turns out the buy-the-dip strategy would earn a third of return of a buy-and-hold strategy with much higher volatility.

MarketWatch, May 23, 2017: Why a buy-the-dip stock-market strategy is inferior to buy-and-hold
MarketWatch, Sept 21, 2021 (updated Sept 25): Opinion:‘Buy the dip’ is a horrible stock-market strategy — and these charts prove it
Reiterating something I started with: BTD sometimes does better. But that doesn't mean it does better on average. A graph from the last cited piece:

Probably as many definitions of BTD as there are investors. Generally, it means, using weakness in an investment to lower your average price in a position.
Right or wrong, for me specifically, YMMV:
Anything short of the following moves down is market noise and/or the market breathing.
On the S&P, a worthy dip is one in which the price drops to the bottom of its trading channel (if it has one) or its 50 dma, usually in the range of a 5%-10% move, while
On an indv stock, it could be a much smaller move of a coupla %.
A 10% move down is not a dip, it is a correction.
A 20% move down is not a dip, it is a bear market.
Words of course matter, and any discussion about this topic is likely the get bogged down/become meaningless until/unless discussion participants accept/understand what the other poster means by a dip.
PLEASE don't waste your time trashing/arguing/debating my definition of this concept. Your time would be better spent determining your own definition of a dip, and understanding how you can profit from buying into one.

A diversion of sorts. Can’t help reflecting on the ‘07-‘09 “dip”. Over that approximately 18 month period I abandoned the normal allocation model. The market freefall and growing public panic began in the late summer or fall of ‘07. By the end of ‘07 I’d moved all my cash and short term stuff into equities. Damn - markets kept falling. So during the first half of ‘09 I moved all my bond funds into equities in stages. And in the second half of ‘08 I transferred all my balanced funds into aggresdive equity funds. In early 2009 I sold my domestic equity funds and moved close to 100% of assets into global equity funds (D&C / Oakmark) which had been hit harder than domestic equities had - being down around 50% from peak. In early March, and having nothing more to heave at the market, I converted about 50% of those global holdings into a Roth. I’d have converted more, but was restrained by the sum on hand available for taxes.
The markets bottomed March 9 or 10 and took off on a tear. I lucked out. It might have fallen farther. So “dipping”, if you want to call it that, worked out. But I’m now 75 instead of 61 or 62. Can’t imagine wanting to endure those 18 months again and to take the same degree of risk. And there have been market bears throughout history that persisted longer than those mere 18 months. Allocations are sweet. But when all hell breaks loose, as it did over those months, a new game plan needs to be rolled out.

Since people were writing about the current "dip" (less than 4%) I used current data. I would have gone back only through 2021 except that there was no dip in 2021 worth mentioning. So I looked at a full year (12 months of monthly investing).
Since people were considering a trigger of less than 4% here, and since I'm not going to do every combo, I did only the 3% 2020 trigger comparison:
Lump sum: 17.37% gain if invested Jan 2.
Lump sum: 18.22% gain if invested Feb 24th (after 4.7% drop from Feb 19):
Gains through 12/31/2020 when $100 invested on first trading day of month:
$17.37 + $17.56 + $23.36 +
$54.04 + $34.26 + $24.11 +
$21.54 + $14.80 + $7.07 +
$11.54 + $13.81 + 2.69 = $242.15
Gains through 12/31/2020 when $100 invested on the day market dips 3%+ (dip period in paren):
$18.41 (Jan 17-31) + $18.22 (Feb 19-24) + $26.03 (Mar 4 - Mar 5) +
$54.04 (Mar 26-Apr 1) + $34.66 (May 11-13) + $26.25 (June 8-11) +
$9.26 (Sept 2-3) + $9.26 (Sept 2-3) + $9.26 (Sept 2-3) +
$9.97 (Oct 12-19) + $0 (no 3% dips after Oct) + $0 (no 3% dips after Oct) = $215.36
This isn't even close. BTD helped a little in Jan, Feb, Mar, and June. But in the second half of the year as the market resumed its climb, it was months until there was another noticeable dip. That was in Sept. So a lot of ground was lost by waiting months to invest more money. And with no dips worth notice after October, $200 (the Nov and Dec allocations) remained univested.
FWIW:

• Jan dip was just over 3% for the dates indicated and market didn't go down further.
  
• Feb dip was 4.7% for dates indicated and continued down in Feb for a total of over 12%, so Feb allocation would have been invested at some point regardless of the trigger.
  
• March dipped over 12% by March 9th, so regardless of the trigger, BTD would have bought. And it would have been way too soon. The market continued to drop a total of over 28% in March before rebounding in the last week of the month.
  
• April 1 was the end of a 6%+ decline.
  
• May dip was 3.7% and didn't go down further.
  
• June dip was over 7% and didn't go down further.
  
• Sept dip was 3½% and continued to go down for a total of 9½% through the third week of Sept.
  
• Oct dip was just 3%, but after a 1% bounce, the market resumed its decline for a total of 7½% through the end of Oct.

Only when the market falls by 5% and if I think the market is overreacting, I used to start getting interested in adding. If the draw down continues to 6-7% or more, I used to start buying. My last buy the dip was a measly 3% increase in equities on October 30, 2020, after having bought equities massively in March-April and dripping in through August. 2021 has been a year of buy the diplets (not dips). I will never understand why the same smart guys allowed the market to dip 8% in October 2020 while a 2-3% drop now is considered a buying opportunity. The peak of economic growth rate was sometime in March and by April-May, India had already shown us what to expect from Covid variants. I am not trying to fight the market or win investing championships - I am trying to understand it to better sync with its rhythms - of course, I have been out of sync in 2021.

@stillers: "(2) I will continue with stock allocations stretched to the top of my allocation range UNTIL the risk/reward of bond funds, CDs and/or MMkts significantly improves."
Would a rise to say 2.5 -3.0 % be enough in CD's to peak your interest ?
Derf

Maybe. But for what term?

BTD sounds good in theory, but then so does "buy low, sell high". Easier said than done.
1. Where does the cash come from?
2. When does one pull the trigger, i.e. how much does the dip need to be to buy?
The examples below are not intended to "prove" that BTD doesn't work. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. Obviously if one waits for too large a dip before buying, one is stuck holding cash forever. And if one pulls the trigger on small dips, one risks losing a little bit on most buys - there are frequent small dips that don't bring the market back down to below where you started.
So I'm curious about how people choose their thresholds and where they get their cash.

---

Here are some sample scenarios starting on Oct 1, 2020 (roughly a year ago), comparing BTD with "buy when cash is available". I use VFIAX as the investment vehicle and market proxy. Red font indicates longer delays (more than a month) before investing on a dip.
For Q1 (where does the cash come from), I have worked through two hypotheticals:
a) One starts with $1200 on Oct 1
b) One has a spare $100 (perhaps from income) at the beginning of each month ($1200 total)
For Q2 (when to buy the dip), I've worked through 1%, 2%, 3%, 4%, 5%, 6%, 7% triggers. There were no dips of 8% or more over the past year.
Lump sum investing: 33.6844% gain on $1200 = $404.21 gain (returns from M*)
Lump sum, invest on dip (on day fund drops specified percentage):
1% dip (Oct 12-Oct 14): 29.4760% gain on $1200 = $353.71 gain
2%, 3% dips (Oct 12 - Oct 19): 31.8043% gain on $1200 = $381.65 gain
4% dip (Oct 12 - Oct 27): 33.1892% gain on $1200 = $398.27 gain
5%, 6%, 7% dips (Oct 12 - Oct 28): 38.0612% on $1200 = $456.73 gain; these are winners
To come out ahead in this time frame with a lump sum and waiting for a dip, one must wait for a 5% - 7% dip. Any faster trigger and one gains less. Any slower trigger, i.e. waiting for an 8%+ dip that never comes, and one is left holding cash and losing out on a $400 gain.
Monthly $100 investing (not waiting for dip):
Oct 1: 33.68% x $100 = $33.68 gain
Nov 2: 36.40% x $100 = $36.40 gain
Dec 1: 23.07% x $100 = $23.07 gain
Jan 4: 21.64% x $100 = $21.64 gain
Feb 1: 19.13% x $100 = $19.13 gain
Mar 1: 15.08% x $100 = $15.08 gain
Apr 1: 11.56% x $100 = $11.56 gain
May 3: 6.87% x $100 = $6.87 gain
June 1: 6.47% x $100 = $6.47 gain
July 1: 3.45% x $100 = $3.45 gain
Aug. 2: 1.78% x $100 = $1.78 gain
Sept. 1: -1.44% x $100 = -$1.44 (loss)
Total gain: $177.69
----------------------
Monthly $100 investing, waiting for a 1% dip:
Oct 1, dip Oct 12-14, 29.48% x $100 = $29.48 gain
Nov 2, dip Nov 16-18, 26.40% x $100 = $26.40 gain
Dec 1, dip Dec 8 -11, 22.97% x $100 = $22.97 gain
Jan 4, dip Jan 8 - 15, 19.38% x $100 = $19.38 gain
Feb 1, dip Feb 12-22, 15.87% x $100 = $15.87 gain
Mar 1, dip March 1 - 3, 17.37% x $100 = $17.37 gain
Apr 1, dip April 16 - 20, 8.39% x $100 = $8.39 gain
May 3, dip May 7 - 10, 6.94% x $100 = $6.94 gain
June 1, dip Jun 14 - 18, 7.30% x $100 = $7.30 gain
July 1, dip July 12 - 16, 3.23% x $100 = $3.23 gain
Aug 2, dip Aug 16 - 18, 1.39% x $100 = $1.39 gain
Sept 1, dip Sep 2 - 10, -0.29% x $100 = - $0.29 (loss)
Total gain: $158.43
----------------------
Monthly $100 investing, waiting for a 2% dip:
Oct 1, dip Oct 12-19, 31.80% x $100 = $31.80 gain
Nov 2, dip Jan 25 - 27, 19.92% x $100 = $19.92 gain
Dec 1, dip Jan 25 - 27, 19.92% x $100 = $19.92 gain
Jan 4, dip Jan 25 - 27, 19.92% x $100 = $19.92 gain
Feb 1, dip Feb 12-25, 17.27% x $100 = $17.27 gain
Mar 1, dip March 1 - 3, 17.37% x $100 = $17.37 gain
Apr 1, dip May 7 - 12, 10.23% x $100 = $10.23 gain
May 1, dip May 7 - 12, 10.23% x $100 = $10.23 gain
June 1, dip Jun 14 - 18, 7.30% x $100 = $7.30 gain
July 1, dip July 12 - 19, 4.89% x $100 = $4.89 gain
Aug 2, dip Sept 2 - 14, 0.30% x $100 = $0.30 gain
Sept 1, dip Sept 2 - 14, 0.30% x $100 = $0.30 gain
Total gain: $159.45
----------------------
Monthly $100 investing, waiting for a 3% dip:
Oct 1, dip Oct 12-19, 31.80% x $100 = $31.80 gain
Nov 2, dip Jan 25 - 29, 21.08% x $100 = $21.08 gain
Dec 1, dip Jan 25 - 29, 21.08% x $100 = $21.08 gain
Jan 4, dip Jan 25 - 29, 21.08% x $100 = $21.08 gain
Feb 1, dip Feb 12-26, 17.82% x $100 = $17.82 gain
Mar 1, dip March 1 - 4, 19.12% x $100 = $19.12 gain
Apr 1, dip May 7 - 12, 10.23% x $100 = $10.23 gain
May 1, dip May 7 - 12, 10.23% x $100 = $10.23 gain
June 1, dip Sept 2 - 20, 2.25% x $100 = $2.25 gain
July 1, dip Sept 2 - 20, 2.25% x $100 = $2.25 gain
Aug 2, dip Sept 2 - 20, 2.25% x $100 = $2.25 gain
Sept 1, dip Sept 2 - 20, 2.25% x $100 = $2.25 gain
Total gain: $161.44
----------------------
Monthly $100 investing, waiting for a 4% dip:
Oct 1, dip Oct 12-27, 33.19% x $100 = $33.19 gain
There are no 4% or greater dips after October, so $1100 remains uninvested
Total gain: $33.19
----------------------
Monthly $100 investing, waiting for 5%, 6%, 7% dip:
Oct 1, dip Oct 12-28, 38.06% x $100 = $38.06 gain
There are no 4% or greater dips after October, so $1100 remains uninvested
Total gain: $38.06

@stillers: "(2) I will continue with stock allocations stretched to the top of my allocation range UNTIL the risk/reward of bond funds, CDs and/or MMkts significantly improves."
Would a rise to say 2.5 -3.0 % be enough in CD's to peak your interest ?
Derf