The single most expensive financial mistake most investors make has nothing to do with picking the wrong stock or owning the wrong fund. It's the decision to do nothing — to wait for a better moment that never quite arrives.
Call it the market timing trap. It sounds reasonable on the surface: Buy low, sell high, avoid the downturns. But decades of data make one thing abundantly clear: Most investors who try to time the market don't just fail to beat it — they meaningfully underperform it.
