One topic I like to write about every few months (partly to remind myself) is the principle that, in the stock market, early is not always better. Of course, this is the opposite of the usual wisdom (the early bird catches the worm, and so on), and it also doesn’t jibe with most investors who (over)react to every wiggle in the market. To these investors, it’s all about being early–after all, if the market has bottomed, it’s better to buy on the first or second day up than the eighth or ninth day up, right? In this limited example,...
