Right now, everything looks expensive. Stocks at record highs. Gold at record highs. Bitcoin off its peak but still historically elevated. The most rational-sounding response is: I’ll wait for a better entry point.
It feels disciplined. It is almost certainly the wrong move.
7 of the 10 best trading days in the last 20 years fell within two weeks of the worst days. The biggest recoveries happen in the middle of the panic — exactly when most people are sitting out, waiting for things to calm down. Miss those days and you don’t just lose some upside. You lose most of it.
Warren Buffett is currently sitting on $397 billion in cash and calling today’s market a casino. Which sounds like a man who thinks a crash is coming. But that’s not what he’s saying. His cash pile isn’t a prediction — it’s a discipline. He’s not waiting for the market to fall. He’s waiting for a specific business at a specific price that meets his criteria. That’s a fundamentally different thing from sitting out entirely.
His actual advice, when asked whether investors should panic during a selloff, is characteristically plain: don’t think of it as buying a stock. Think of it as buying a business. Focus on the 10 and 20 year outlook — not the headlines of the day.
The uncomfortable truth is that waiting for a dip is also a bet. You’re betting that you’ll know when to get back in. That the dip will be big enough to justify missing the gains on the way down. That you won’t panic again when prices fall further than expected. History says most people get that sequence wrong every time.
Time in the market. Not timing the market. It’s the oldest lesson in investing — and the least followed one.