Investing Cash Into The Market: Market Timing, Psychology, and the Long Game

Welcome to EWA’s Finlit podcast. EWA is a fee only RAA, based out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We hope all listeners of this podcast will benefit as we deep dive into complex financial topics that we will make simplified for you. And we hope that this really serves as a catalyst so that you can make the best financial planning decisions for your family and also save time. Welcome to. Today, James and I are going to be talking about cash on the sideline. Something that we see the general public struggle with sometimes is, do I ever put cash in? There’s lots of reasons why now is not the right time. And then we also see to this day some of the most sophisticated investors, ceos of big companies, executives of Fortune 500 companies that still question knowing all the investment principles they know. 

Speaker 1

·

00:55

They still think valuations are too high, et cetera. So, James, what are the top three objections that we see for someone that’s considering moving cash into the market? 

Speaker 2

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01:06

Yeah, I’d say, number one, valuations are high. So that happened more so, like, before the drop last year. So stocks are really high, business are overvalued. I’m going to wait for a drop. That’s a common one I’m waiting for which actually leads in the second one. I’m waiting for a big correction to happen, or a recession. And, yeah, a lot of times people think that there’s a better time to invest. We can wait for a drop. And so we’re going to really go through a lot of the math and ods behind that. And I like a lot with one thing that you said is even people that rationally understand the math and the odds, there’s the second half of investing more. Probably the most important part is psychology. 

Speaker 2

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01:52

And the psychological aspect of, yeah, you may think rationally this makes sense, but being able to sleep at night, having a peace of mind, do that. So we’re going to go through a lot of the math, but that’s what we want to consider and we’ll talk about. 

Speaker 1

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02:03

Yeah, for sure. And separate from that, a lot of people, let’s say sophisticated investors or retirees who don’t necessarily need the best returns, they’ve accumulated a lot of wealth, for example, right now, we just go on. Fidelity is who we use as one of our big custodians that we use for clients. And right on their main website, it’s like rounded up, earn 5% in a money market, government money market, guaranteed up to 500,000 by the SPIC, similar to bank insurance of FDIC. And then also Fidelity purchased extra insurance to guarantee cash, up to 1.9 million per customer. So it’s like, guys, why would I invest in the market when I can guarantee myself 5% right now in cash? You’re saying, long term, I’m going to get seven or eight or 9% in the stock market, I’m good with five. 

Speaker 1

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02:51

But one thing I want to point out is that the biggest risk of any kind of fixed income investment is reinvestment risk. So essentially, when interest rates change, and if we just go right on American Express website, and the reason I chose American Express website is because this is clearly listed out. So if you go buy eleven month CD right now at American Express, they would pay you 5.25%. So after eleven months, you’d get a 5.25% guaranteed rate of return. However, after eleven months, when you go back and say, what do I do with this cash? They return it to you. The question is then, what are interest rates going to be then? And if you look further down their website, it’s really interesting, because if you go down to three years, they offer 1.15%. If you go down to four years, it’s 1.2%. 

Speaker 1

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03:43

So they must know something. And obviously, American Express is a huge financial institution, so they’re betting the interest rates change. They’re not willing to say, hey, we’re going to give you that 5.25% for four years. We’re willing to give you 1.2% if you lock your money up for four years. We’re only willing to give that 5.25 for eleven months. So the biggest reason I would say these 5% money market returns are irrelevant for long term money is maybe they’re here to last, maybe not. But most likely, based upon history, interest rates fluctuate a lot, and there’s risk. On the upside, if you lock yourself in a duration interest rates go up, you’d be missing out on a high rate return. 

Speaker 1

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04:25

Once the money’s returned to you could be back into that 1% rate environment that we’ve been used to for years in bank environments, et cetera. So that’s just one thing addressed, is just in general, for someone that may be considering, I never want to invest this, I’m happy with this 5%. It’s not forever. And then, now let’s shift into the purpose of this podcast, which is really the timing, the statistics, and just the general philosophies of how to get, you know, this cash should be in your long term financial plan. What’s the best way to approach getting the money in? And then we can touch briefly on how we’ve used this data and also married it with site, because the data shows, statistically. Put it in, put it in at once, all in at once, every time. 

Speaker 1

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05:10

And what a lot of people do is they’ll wait. The weight, the weight, it hurts them. So we have a philosophy that marries the psychology of human behavior and the statistics to get it in accelerated three months, and then also, if the dips occur, we get it in. So we’ll go into that in a second. But this is really how we base the psychology, is really diving deep into statistics, know how to get cash on the stock market. So let’s dive in. So, Jameson, what’s the average cash yield? Just measuring it by the three month treasury over, let’s say, almost since the Great Depression. 

Speaker 2

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05:45

Yeah. So everything we’re going to talk about, we’re going to go back to. That’s when things really started. The index was originally started to be tracked, so right around the Great Depression, like you said. But going back to then, if you just look, we’ll use the three year treasury as a compare. Three month treasury. Sorry. So short term three month treasury as a cash comparison, it’s about 3% on average, and there’s big fluctuations, obviously, went down to 0% certain times, up to, like, almost 15%. So a large variation. And so if were to compare that to getting that three month treasury to one year performance of the S and P 500, what do you think the ods are? Or you may know the answer. The ods are that cash beats that one year return. The S and P 531%, it’s about. 

Speaker 1

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06:35

A third of the time. So if you have a million dollars and you put in the s and P 500. Every single year over and you had a one year return and I had a million dollars and I just stayed in. A three month treasury reinvested. Three month treasury reinvested every single year. You would have won 67 or 69% of the time. If I kept cash, I would have won 31% of the time. 

Speaker 2

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07:02

Yeah. 

Speaker 1

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07:02

So long term, I would have gotten crushed. But about one out of every three years, I would have felt good that I didn’t enter the market. 

Speaker 2

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07:08

Yeah. And then this is fascinating. So if you extend that period over. So one year, now we look at rolling five year periods. The ods of cash winning drops to 22% of the time. A ten year period goes down to 15% of the time and over a 25 year period. So rolling 25 year periods in that time frame, cash has never won so. 

Speaker 1

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07:27

Essentially, if, regardless, if I put money in if I want, a recession is coming, if I put money in right before the drop of the tech bust or right before the COVID bust or right before the 2008 financial crisis, if that money was the commitment to a long term financial plan, even ten years, so forget it. 25 years. If it’s a lifetime money, which equity money should because it’s not like there’s a certain time, we’re going to just liquidate it all. It’s going to be a systematic, I’m supporting my life by design forever. There’s no losing if that’s long term money, which we define. Even if you’re 70 years old and you say, well, I don’t have 25 years. Well, a good financial plan, you’re not going to run out of money. You need to have some nest egg there. 

Speaker 1

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08:10

So it is still 25 years because it’s going to be there. The principal, we want to be there. We want beneficiaries if that’s a goal for legacy, et cetera. So it’s really irrelevant if you’re committing money that you put in the market as an attachment to a long term financial plan. If you’re just trying to time the market and say, where can I get the best rate of return? Then you’re really gambling. 

Speaker 2

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08:30

Yeah. 

Speaker 1

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08:30

And you’d still best just putting it in statistically, because then what you just described, one year, you’re going to win two thirds of the time. Ten years, you’re going to win 15% of the or 85% of the time. By putting the money in. Then 25 years, you’re going to win every time. 

Speaker 2

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08:42

Yeah, I think that’s all so important. And then just to reiterate, short term money shouldn’t be in the market. So that’s when you should keep it in cash. If you want the money in the next year or two, don’t invest it, keep it safe. But, yeah, let’s look at anything else to add on that. 

Speaker 1

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08:58

No, that’s good. That’s great. 

Speaker 2

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09:01

And then this is another interesting one. So we’re going to go through just odds of a couple of scenarios, number one or number two, I guess ods of buying in at a lower price in the future. So same thing that 1928 to now, there is a 75% chance that stocks at some point in the. So if we looked at today, some point in the future will be lower than they are now. However, the 25% of the time, it just shoots way up. And the bull market runs are generally pretty significant. Like we look back from, like, 2009 2022. So even trying to time up that, yes, you’ll probably get a point that is going to be a little bit lower, but you’re going to miss out on so much upside because that 25% is so significant. 

Speaker 1

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09:45

Got you. So just to go through that data, if you’re trying to time the market, there’s two points. You’ve got to get it. If you’re looking at, well, I want to get it lower. And you’re waiting, and you’re waiting and waiting. Most likely there will be. But statistically, when you pull that trigger, to get it at a point lower, we found is nearly impossible to do because there’s always going to be a reason why you think it’s going to go lower. But long term, it always ends up. But there’s these short term oscillations that make it so tempting to wait and try to get it in at the perfect time. Yeah, that’s interesting. 

Speaker 2

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10:24

And then this is actually, we can put that into practice with real stock market data. So if we wanted, let’s just look. March 2009 was low point of the 2008 2009 recession. And so if you waited, if you said, I’m going to wait for a 20% pullback from that point, from a month, 20% pullback. So we’ll say December 1 of 2023, if we looked at December 31, the end of the year end, we would want a 20% drop in that one month period. If you waited, that would not have occurred. I thought this was fascinating. That would not have occurred until 2022. So you didn’t get one month that had a 20% pullback. And when that happened in 2022, that pulled the S and P 500 back to 2021 levels. And that is a 329% rate of return since March of 2009. 

Speaker 2

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11:27

So if you tried to do that, you missed ten, almost 13 years of stock market growth. 

Speaker 1

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11:34

Yeah. And so, like 2022, even if you saw a 50% decline that year, which we did not, it would have been back to 2017 levels. And if you compare that to 2009, that’s still 185% higher. 

Speaker 2

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11:44

Wow. 

Speaker 1

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11:45

Than it was in 2009. So there’s always paralysis by analysis, as far as getting it perfectly. But the magic of compounding annual growth, compounding interest, the 8th one of the world is getting in and getting into work and just being patient. 

Speaker 2

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12:00

Yeah. 

Speaker 1

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12:03

That’s staggering data. Okay, so with all this data, we have these probabilities. I think the cash outperforming the stock market, to me, is the most simplistic and most helpful data to listeners at this point. And then just secondly, just how difficult it is, the timing, because it’s just going to be paralysis by analysis. Yeah, there’s a good chance at some point it’s going to be lower. But if you’re attaching money in the market to a long term financial plan, it’s going to be statistically always higher. When looking at the long term and trying to get in at a point that it actually helps you and not hurts you is statistically the ods are just stacked against your favor. So those are the takeaways so far. 

Speaker 1

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12:47

So now let’s talk about, so let’s say someone has a million dollars in cash and they want to get in the market, but they’re scared. Here we are. Let’s just talk about today. Next year, inflation is cooling off. Does that continue to cool off the war? Does this turn into a bigger thing? Does the US have to get more involved than they already are? How does that relate to international relations? How does you get China, Russia, and then we’ve got an election, which is historically usually good for markets. But. So there’s a lot of reasons why I could say if I was a client of. I want to wait. I want to wait for the drop. You just told me there’s a 75% probability it’s going to be lower at some point. Let’s wait for that point and get me in that point. 

Speaker 1

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13:32

So one option would be to say, let’s just dollar cost average. So walk us through that example. 

Speaker 2

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13:37

Let’s just really make this really simple. What is dollar cost averaging? Dollar cost averaging, like we said, there’s two ways you can get money in the market. First one, just throw it in. We’ll call that like investing lump sum. Dollar cost averaging is spreading out the investment over a period of time. So, example, if you had $100,000, you could put that all in at one time, or you could invest a portion of it monthly, which would be $8,333 per month over that twelve month period. 

Speaker 1

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14:03

Or 83,333 a month. Talking about a million. 

Speaker 2

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14:09

Talking about a million. Yeah. So doing that again, back to that 1928 data, that beats investing a lump sum in the market 32% of the time. 

Speaker 1

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14:27

Interesting. So if you had a million dollars and you decided, I want to take this conservatively and just spread it out in the market over twelve months versus if I had a million dollars and just put it in all in January. So let’s just say next year, January 1, 2024, I put a million bucks in. Boom, you take a million and every 83,333 a month, January, February, all the way through December of 2024, you get it in. So you have a 32% chance that you’re going to have a higher rate of return than me. I have a 68% chance that me just literally flinging into the market all at once is going to beat you. 

Speaker 2

·

15:00

Yeah. And then the longer you extend the dollar cost averaging, the lower the probability goes. So a 36 month period, if you want to dollar cost average over three years, the ods drop down to 26%. 

Speaker 1

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15:14

Interesting. Okay, so the statistics show, get the money in and stop worrying about it. Get it all in at once. 

Speaker 2

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15:22

That’s the ODS. Yeah. 

Speaker 1

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15:23

Psychology says, let’s wait for the next 10, 20, 30 years before we get this money in, because there’s always going to be something to be scared about. 

Speaker 2

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15:32

Yeah. And so should you put it all in at one time discussion? But we’re going to talk about our philosophy. It depends. But the math says, yeah, you should. 

Speaker 1

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15:42

Yeah. So let’s real quick, before we go through some of the other stuff, let’s talk about. Well, let’s get that to that. Let’s keep going through this. We’ve got a couple other points to make. So there’s Cape ratios, scholar pe ratios. I hear these thrown around a lot, Jameson. And they’re like, oh, these ratios have never been this. And this means there’s going to be talk us through this nonsense. 

Speaker 2

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16:02

So if Cape ratio basically just measures, I guess you could use it for any asset, but it just measures the overall valuation, how overvalued? Undervalued is. So, bottom line, if you again looked at SP 500 since 1928, and you moved stocks to bonds when the Cape ratio went below the nintieth percentile, meaning you have the SP 500 and it gets below 90% of its all time high value. And you said, I’m going to take stocks out, go to bonds, and then reinvest back in, your annual return per year would have been 8.7%. By doing that every time that happened, if you buy and held. So you just bought the SP 500, held it, didn’t do that and just stayed invested, the per year rate of return would have been 9.4%. 

Speaker 1

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16:54

So trying to get extra fancy, extra timing being extra, you’re taking away almost zero point 70 basis points of returns. 

Speaker 2

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17:03

And you’re probably creating a lot of stress and wasting a lot of time. 

Speaker 1

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17:06

And the probability of actually getting back in the stock market is very hard. We’ve seen from experience, if you pull out, it’s very hard to convince yourself to get back in, because then if it’s already gone back up, except, so then you’re doubling down in your bet, hoping it eventually goes down again and you’re wasting all this time while the market’s appreciating and dividends are getting paid, et cetera. 

Speaker 2

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17:23

Yeah. So valuations, cape ratio, that’s hard game to win. All of these are hard games to win. 

Speaker 1

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17:29

Yeah, they’re games. They’re not sound philosophies, statistics, they’re betting games. 

Speaker 2

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17:35

Yeah. And then the last one I think is interesting. I guess we have another one, but the ods of a recession coming. Talk through that. 

Speaker 1

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17:42

Yeah, absolutely. So bear markets that lead to a recession, we see a 42% decline in average, or if not leading into a recession of 29%. So that’s first things first. And we always say in general, if you look at S and P 500 returns from the great depression till now, the market in general is up 75% of the time. It’s down 25% of the time. So just looking at like a casino, you can own the casino by just staying in the market, you’re always going to win. There’s going to be some bad times where people went off you, but if you play in the casino and try to time this stuff, eventually you may have a good day or two. Eventually, if you play long enough, you’re going to lose all your money. And that’s the stock market analogy. 

Speaker 1

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18:22

Once you’re in, be the house, stay in for good. 

Speaker 2

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18:25

I think to put that in plain English, not all bear markets lead to recession. 

Speaker 1

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18:32

Yeah, absolutely. 

Speaker 2

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18:33

What does lead? On average, a 42% decline leads to recession. When it does not lead to recession, the average is 29%. 

Speaker 1

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18:41

So like 2022, everyone saying recession, recession. I could pull up 100 news articles of these reputable sources that said recession, it’s inevitable. Didn’t happen. Yeah, the market dropped over 20%, but corporations were still profitable. And you need both of those things to go further to be a recession. 

Speaker 2

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19:01

Actually, as I was doing the research, I didn’t know this. There were two recessions where stocks didn’t even drop in history. 

Speaker 1

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19:07

I don’t remember the years, but interesting. 

Speaker 2

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19:09

Yeah, there was no equity drop. 

Speaker 1

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19:11

Okay, so let’s talk about if. Now, this was staggering data that you pulled here at Jameson. So talk about if you perfectly timed out and back in, which we know is statistically that’s like literally you going and rolling the perfect, like if you’re playing craps like the perfect hand every time, if you time these recessions perfectly, getting out of the market, then back in, versus just staying in the whole time. What does the difference really mean? 

Speaker 2

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19:36

You actually outperform. 

Speaker 1

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19:38

If you did, of course you would. Yeah. 

Speaker 2

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19:40

So it’s almost 11% return if your buy and hold again was at 9.4. But what’s interesting is most of that growth came the great Depression. The S and P 500 dropped 86%. We’ve never seen that, anything close to that since. 

Speaker 1

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19:54

We saw 51 ish in the tech bust in 2003, 2002. We saw that 50% level again in 2008. But if you looked at the calendar year, it was really in the high thirty s. Covid was at 34. Yeah, you’re right. That was a one off. Phenomenally. It could happen again. But regardless. 

Speaker 2

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20:18

I was thinking about this, too. A lot of regulations were put in place to avoid that. It could happen again, but probably not. So anyway, if you eliminated the Great Depression from that time period, if you said, okay, a lot of these returns came from that 86% pullback and then rebound. There’s 14 recessions after the Great Depression. If you time that perfectly, your average rate of return would have been about ten and a half percent. And then that time period, if you just bought and hold it was over 11%. 

Speaker 1

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20:47

So you’d have actually been better just buying and holding. Got it. 

Speaker 2

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20:50

If you just eliminate the Great Depression. 

Speaker 1

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20:51

Because that was like, that was the big anomaly. Yeah. Okay, let’s talk about interest rates. So 2022, conservative investors were frustrated. If you were invested in a five year bond paying 3% in 2022, and then suddenly bonds went up to 5% and you had to get your money, you’d have to sell it to someone that’s not willing to buy your bond because they can just go buy a new one for five. Why would they buy your for three? So people saw temporary declines in their bond prices. So basically, you’re forced to ride out those lower interest rates to avoid any kind of principal loss for the duration of the bonds. So how does this affect equities when interest rates fluctuated dramatically? We’ve really seen the biggest. The ten year treasury rose in 2022 at 2.37%. That was the largest rise in over 40 years. 

Speaker 1

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21:35

How does this affect the stock prices? 

Speaker 2

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21:38

So that’s a huge misconception that when interest rates start to rise, that’s bad for stock prices. What is true is a lot of times when stocks drop, people flee to safety, people flee to bonds. But what we’re going to have anything. 

Speaker 1

·

21:55

To do with interest rates, nothing to. 

Speaker 2

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21:56

Do with interest rates. 

Speaker 1

·

21:56

Zero. That has to do with the prices. And they have supply and demand has nothing to do with interest rates that get set. 

Speaker 2

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22:02

Yeah, we’re going to talk about is when interest rates start to go up, which we’ve seen the last 18 months. How does that impact stock price? So, 2022, that ten year treasury that you said rose was about 2.4%, and that’s the largest one year rise since 1980, which obviously there was super high interest rates. Everything that went on in the S and P 500 in 2022, we saw the largest drop since 2008, which was a recession. 

Speaker 1

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22:36

Well, since the COVID bust, 34%. That was temporary. That was a three month down. 

Speaker 2

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22:42

Yeah. We’re talking one year return. 

Speaker 1

·

22:44

One year return. Got it. 

Speaker 2

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22:45

Okay. And so basically, bottom line is there’s almost 0% correlation between rising interest rates and stock prices. Dropping stock prices. So if you look back to that 1928 data, the average one year return for the S and P 500 was 11.6%. So just, again, that one year rolling return and the one year return when ten year treasury rises or falls, doesn’t matter. 

Speaker 1

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23:15

It just moves. 

Speaker 2

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23:15

It’s eleven and a half. 

Speaker 1

·

23:17

So it’s literally exactly 0.1% difference. 

Speaker 2

·

23:19

Yeah, exactly. 

Speaker 1

·

23:20

Try to use interest rates as a reflection of where the stock prices are headed. It’s relevant long term, and of course, they’re going to move up or down that year, but that’s going to be for irrelevant reasons that no one can predict and certainly not interest rates going up or down. Okay, so everything we’ve talked about is basically, I’m thinking, well, let’s put cash in if it’s attached to a long term financial plan. So, first of all, one thing we’d recommend, never put cash in the stock market if you’re going to pull it out in under seven years. In general, it should be a goal at least five years. We recommend seven years long term. 

Speaker 1

·

24:00

And if you’re a young person, I mean, you have it at a paycheck, there’s no reason, if you have savings, if you’re buying a house, if you’re buying a car, that goes into cash, into the highest paying interest cash, if you’re investing for a kid’s college, for any goal over seven years, such as financial independence, starting a business in the future, a second house, vacation house. Yeah. It should go into equity. So that’s the first thing is make sure you never mix short term money in the stock market because you’re never going to have peace of mind. You may win sometimes, but probabilities are not safe enough to put that money at risk and then actually experience a loss when you need the money. 

Speaker 1

·

24:37

So let’s assume for a second that you have money that is committed to a long term financial plan of seven years or greater, and it should go in equities. The philosophy we’ve established using this data is the safest thing to do would be just to dollar cost averages over a long period of time. The probability would tell us, just put it all in at once. So we’ve developed, depending on the client, a three to six month time frame. We’re not waiting a year where we dollar cost average on a weekly basis. But then we have seven asset classes we invest in. And if during that three month period, as an example, one asset class drops more than 10%, we immediately fulfill and accelerate that entire position of that asset class. 

Speaker 1

·

25:21

So if mid cap stocks drop 10% during that three months boom, and we want 10% of the money and mid caps, we’re fulfilling that entire 10% right there. And again, large caps suddenly drop in month two, we’re stopping the dollar cost averaging, but at the end of three months, all of the cash is moved into the correct allocation across the board. And this is really a marriage of the probabilities of get the money in. And also the psychology of if there’s that short term noise and you’re really worried, you’re really convinced there’s going to be some volatility, we’ll take advantage of it, we’re going to take care of the drops, but we’re going to be disciplined of long term. This is long term money and those drops really are appealing but irrelevant in a long term financial plan. 

Speaker 2

·

26:01

Yeah. 

Speaker 1

·

26:02

So anything else to add before we close up? 

Speaker 2

·

26:05

No, I think that’s a great philosophy and it’s always a discussion if there’s not a 10% pullback and the client understands that, if they’re okay with the peace of mind. Yeah, we’ll have the conversation about putting it all in at once. But general default is you have three to six months and that’s kind of marrying all of these together. 

Speaker 1

·

26:24

Absolutely the greatest returns. Want to point this out real quick. If you get a couple of returns of, let’s say, 50%, but then your money is just dead for the 30 other years that you’re working versus just a slow and steady discipline seven, you’re going to have ten x the money if you just take the discipline, boring. Remove the decision fatigue route of systematic, low cost, diversified asset allocated investing. It’s as simple as that. Yeah, and all data proves that. But in today’s society. Decision fatigue is everywhere. Opportunities are endless. Everyone’s pitching everything the next big fad. But staying disciplined and having these philosophies in place, we’ve found, can remove the decision fatigue, remove the stress, and ensure that your goals are respected and balanced and living presently, today and secure in the future. 

Speaker 2

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27:09

One other thing that I want to mention, based on what you said also stock trading has been gamified, especially since COVID when people saw those big movements and they can go online and start trading so quickly on the platforms online. And so I think that’s a lot of people have gotten away from this because of how gamified it’s been and that short term gratification. But totally reiterate everything you just said, just stick to the basic principles and invest for the long term. 

Speaker 1

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27:35

Absolutely. Well, thanks for joining us everyone, and we’ll catch you next week. Thanks for tuning in to our podcast. Hopefully you found this helpful. Really hope this is as beneficial and impactful to as many people across the nation as possible. So hit the follow button, make sure to rate the podcast and please share with any friends or family members that would also find this beneficial. Thank you very much.