The Right Ways To Time The Market

Is it time in the market or timing the market? Which strategy will help improve your investment returns and increase your wealth? You don't have to chose. We have a few strategies that you can implement to allow you to do both. I will show you how to time the market and make more money in this post.
The Right Ways To Time The Market

The Right Ways To Time The Market
 

Many investment and personal finance experts believe that it’s time in the market, not timing the market that will increase your investment success. Even researchers showed this to be true. Trying to time the market is futile. I am definitely on board with this philosophy when it comes to my own investments.
 

With that being said, I think that there are a few situations that you can further increase your chance of succeeding as an investor by timing the market. So, how do you define success? For starters, it’s not the percentage return on your investment that makes you a success. It’s the return that you make after taxes is what matters.
 

Let’s illustrate what I mean with a simple example. Investor A makes a reasonable annual return of 7% on his investment, but with a great tax minimization strategy, his tax bill only cost him about 1% of his 7% investment return. Hence, Investor A’s annual net after-tax return on his investment is 6%.
 

On the other hand, you have Investor B, who makes a great annual return of 10% but has no tax minimization strategy. As a result, his tax bill cost him a whopping 5% of his 10% investment return. Hence, Investor B’s annual after-tax return is 5%.
 

From the two examples, we can see that what you keep is more important than what you earn. To help you keep more of your money, I have a few strategies to help you time the market, increase your after-tax returns on your investment and keep more of your money in your pocket. Let’s see what they are.

Re-balance Your Portfolio

If you ask different experts, “How often should you re-balance your portfolio?” Depending on who you ask, some will recommend once a year, while others may recommend twice a year. If you ask me, “I’ll recommend re-balancing your portfolio based on the market condition and your investment performance.”
 

For my own portfolio, if a certain stock/sector is performing very well and the weighting is increasing over a certain percentage (let’s say 20%), I’d sell a portion of that stock/sector to lock in the gain. I will then reallocate that money to other sectors that are currently underweight.
 

By timing the market to re-balance your portfolio, it can help you lock in your gains, lower the volatility of your portfolio and reduce your investment risks.

Take Advantage Of People’s Panic

According to Warren Buffett, as an investor, you should “be fearful when others are greedy and be greedy when others are fearful.” I use this philosophy to take advantage of people’s emotion and psychology to time my options trades. When there are fear or euphoria in the stock markets the premium that people pay to buy options tend to go up. If you need a refresher on how options works, check out my options basics post.
 

To illustrate how I take advantage of people’s fear, let’s go back to April 18,2017 when Goldman Sachs reported their first quarter earnings. The quarterly highlights were: total revenue increased by 27% and earnings per common share increased by 92% year over year. On top of that, they increased their quarterly dividend from $0.65 to $0.75 per share per quarter. With these types of numbers, you’d expect the stock price to skyrocket, wouldn’t you?
 

Ironically, Goldman Sachs’ stock price dropped from $226 to $215 per share that day. This was due to analysts having higher expectations for their revenues and earnings. I did not see anything bad about these quarterly numbers. Seeing the panic, I made my move by selling two put options contracts. These contracts allowed the purchaser to right but not the obligation to sell me 200 shares of Goldman Sachs common stock at $185 per share anytime until January 19, 2018.
 

For the transaction, the purchaser paid $1,368 for the rights just because the quarterly numbers were below the lofty analysts’ expectations. Fast forward about eight months later, Goldman Sachs stock price is about $256 per share as of December 14, 2017. If the sky doesn’t fall within the next month, I don’t think the purchaser will want to sell their 200 shares to me for $185 each. Hence, I get to keep the $1,368 in premium.

Support People’s Euphoria

Another way to time the market is when there is an excessive or an abundance of optimism in the marketplace. A great example of this euphoria is the cryptocurrency mania. There hasn’t been a day that has gone by without me encountering headlines related to cryptocurrencies, namely Bitcoin. I wish that cryptocurrencies are easy to understand and straightforward to invest like stocks, but it’s not. So I will stay away regardless if there is a great opportunity to make money right now.
 

This is a little off topic, but if you haven’t read about the Tublip Bulb Mania during 1630 in Holland and the South Sea Company during 1711 in England, it’s a great financial history lesson. After you’ve read these two events, you’ll understand why I am staying away from cryptocurrencies (and you should too, there’s just too much risk and volatility).
 

Now back to how I took advantage of people’s optimism to help improve my investment returns. When I own a stock that had significantly increased in price and reaches the 52 weeks high or the all-time high, I start to write cover call options contracts for those stocks. When selling a cover call contract, I am providing the right, but not the obligation for the options purchaser to purchase the underlying stock that I own at a specific price within an agreed time frame. The purchaser pays me a premium for this right.
 

Normally, I will set the strike price at least 10% higher than the current price. During this time, I collect the premium from the purchaser upfront and also receive dividends from the company if they pay a dividend. If the purchaser exercise his/her right to purchase the underlying stock, I will make at least another 15% on top of my gains. If the options are left to expire, I get to keep the premium and it’ll be taxed preferentially as capital gain.

Tax Loss Harvesting

When investing in individual stocks, inevitably there will be winners and losers in my portfolio. Because I make trades throughout the year that often resulted in capital gains, I need to find ways to offset my gains so that I pay a minimal amount of income tax. The methods that most investors use to pay less capital gain tax is Tax Loss Harvesting.
 

Tax Loss Harvesting is selling the loser stocks in your investment portfolio to lock in the loss of those stocks and to offset the capital gains you have in the same year. Unless the investment I made was either horrible or a mistake, the stock that I sold to lock in the capital loss, I’ll use the same fund to buy a competitor stock in the same industry. This way, I get the capital loss benefit to offset my capital gain without impacting my investment portfolio.
 

Is it time in the market or timing the market? Which strategy will help improve your investment returns and increase your wealth? You don't have to chose. We have a few strategies that you can implement to allow you to do both. I will show you how to time the market and make more money in this post.

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A great example is when I sold my Potash stocks to lock in the losses and bought it’s competitor’s stock, Agrium. Fortuitously, Potash and Agrium decided to merge into one company. As a result, I was able to take advantage of this tax loss harvesting and still end up with the exact same portfolio weighting as before. Most people usually do tax loss harvesting at the end of the year. For me, I time my activities based on my gains and losses.

My Two Cents

In terms of investing in the stock market, I can honestly say that I had tried to time the market before and I was lucky to get it right less than half the time. As a result, my investments are now spending more time in the market rather trying to time the market. However, the market fluctuates on a daily basis and there are opportunities for you to time the market to increase your investment returns without jumping in and out of the market. I hope that the four strategies presented here can help you manage your investment better and keep more of your money in your pocket.
 

So readers, what strategies do you use to improve your investment returns, keep more of your money and pay less income tax? Do you believe in time in the market and not timing the market when it comes to your investments?
 

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Leo T. Ly, Money Coach, Personal Finance Blogger/Enthusiast and a Realtor Living in the Markam, Ontario, CanadaAbout Leo
I am a money coach, personal finance blogger/enthusiast and a Realtor living in Markham, Ontario, Canada. I built a net worth of a million dollars over a ten year period. I did it by being a disciplined saver, taking advantage of income tax rules and borrowing money to invest rather than for consumption. I am often excited to take advantage of free money from employers and governments in addition to building more passive income sources. After accumulating my first million dollars, I am now embarking on a second journey towards achieving financial independence. On this journey, I will strive to increase my net worth to two million dollars and retire by the age of 48 - Freedom 48. Come along and follow my journey on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or Google Plus.



There are 20 opinions expressed on this post.

  1. Cool article, Leo!

    I personally never had the time to play w/ options or keep up with the markets as closely as I’d like. At the end, it comes down to whether you have a strong interest w/ keeping up. Timing may work great for some people, like yourself, but I don’t think I’m lucky enough to catch things at the right moment haha.

    I generally just buy and use DCA method. But I do set aside some play money to buy single stocks, which are my long term holds as well — no timing there either. I never look at them and I just let them be.

    However, I’ve be recently thinking about saving more cash aside than I normally would because we keep hearing how expensive the equity markets are today. It’s not to say that I’ll stop investing using DCA. I will, but just less so I can save more cash. According to Buffett, having cash set aside can be viewed as a “call option” w/ no expiration date. If things start falling, it would be a great opportunity to buy hence increasing your chances of better returns. For example, during the ’09 crisis, if someone saved a stash of cash aside, they would’ve had an opportunity to buy at a discount (no duh, right? lol).

    Again, I won’t time the market for my bare minimum monthly automated investments. But I am considering shifting a bit of my allocation towards cash as an “option” to buy investments in the future (I’ll probably treat this as my play money). So, in a way I guess you can say I’m somewhat trying to time the market w/ a small bucket of my money.

  2. I’m slowly learning and building my financial portfolio and still growing and lots to learn. This is great post to read!

  3. These are all such wonderful tips! I have not invested any (real amount of) money but I totally need to change that SOON!

  4. This is really interesting, I’ve been thinking lately about doing some investing as I’m sure in the long term it is a really good thing to do I’ll have to pin this article for later.

  5. I hear what you mean about crypto currencies. The whole idea kind of scares me off. Just reminds me of stuff like the junk bonds of years past that went bust. Great post on all the different ideas to invest in the market though.

  6. I don’t know the first thing about investing so this tips have been really helpful. I know I should probably invest more, I just don’t know where to start!

  7. I’m so lost when it comes to investing I really need to learn more about this. Learning how to make the most of your money its really something we all should learn how to do.

  8. Investing is such a thing that I need to work on when it comes to financial management. This reminds me of the stock marketing that my friends are doing back to my home country. And now, this Bitcoin mania is the talk of the town, honestly, I wanna try to jump into it but I need to learn more about it. This really shows that stock marketing is really for everyone, just needs time to learn about it to get that hang of it.

  9. I haven’t gotten into options but my husband does. I like Finsavvy Panda also just do dollar cost averaging without timing the market but set aside some extra money for dividend paying stocks. We will see how we all react when the market tanks, hopefully I will have the right mindset when the time comes 🙂

    1. @GYM, the true test for investor is when the market tanks. It’s only a matter of time as the market goes in cycles so it’s just another day.

      You can make quite a bit once your portfolio is big enough and you can leverage the stock that you own to make more money.

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