behavioral finance The Behavioral Gap: Why Smart People Make Dumb Investment Decisions Loss aversion. Recency bias. Overconfidence. The psychology research identifies 17 biases that cost investors money. Most are impossible to see in yourself.
market timing Why Trying to Time the Market Costs You 40% of Your Returns DALBAR's 2024 study: S&P 500 returned 9.65% annualized over 30 years. The average investor got 5.5%. The gap is entirely behavioral.
DCA Dollar-Cost Averaging vs. Lump Sum Investing: What the Data Actually Shows Vanguard studied 70 years of data: lump-sum beats DCA 68% of the time. It also loses badly the other 32%. Which matters more depends on why you're investing.
