Is This A Good Time To Buy The Dip?

🌟🌟🌟Buying the Dip involves purchasing stocks during a market decline and is closely associated with another popular saying "Buy Low, Sell High"

However the reality is no one, not even the experts can say exactly when is the perfect time to buy.  Buying the Dip implies timing the market.  However if buying the dip is consistently effective, everyone would be doing it.

What happens if you think you are buying the dip of a certain stock but the stock keeps going down?

So since we can't time the market, it is best to use a dollar cost average strategy to buy great quality stocks that over time will grow exponentially through the magic of compounding. 

When I first started investing I tried to buy the dip but frankly that has not been too successful for me.  Since then I believe that investing in plain vanilla ETFs are much better and the results have been much better than my rookie years. 

Buying plain vanilla ETFs is a great way to diversify my portfolio at a low cost and minimises my risks in investing in single stocks.  The ETFs do the heavy lifting for me by selecting the best stocks and weeding out the poor performing ones periodically.  There is no need to read company reports, nor monitor the markets umpteen times a day.  It leaves more time to chill out and spend quality time with my family. 

A good example is $SPDR Portfolio S&P 500 ETF(SPLG)$ which tracks the S&P500 Index.   This ETF represents the Top 500 of the best US stocks.  It is a mini version of $SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust(SPY)$ .  Both ETFs share the same Fund Manager but the big difference is the liquidity and the expense ratio.  SPY is the biggest and most liquid ETF in the US markets favoured by the big institutions and traders.  However SPLG has one of the lowest Expense ratio at 0.02% compared to SPY's 0.09%.  

SPLG forms part of my core portfolio together with $STI ETF(ES3.SI)$ .   The STI ETF is the oldest ETF in Singapore and represents the top 30 Blue Chips trading in the Straits Times Index.   The Top 10 holdings include the 3 Big Singapore Banks $DBS GROUP HOLDINGS LTD(D05.SI)$   $OVERSEA-CHINESE BANKING CORP(O39.SI)$  and $UNITED OVERSEAS BANK LIMITED(U11.SI)$  as well as $Singtel(Z74.SI)$  Keppel, Capitaland Integrated Commercial Trust, Jardine Matheson, Capitaland Ascendas REIT, Singapore and Singapore Exchange. 

I am happy that both ETFs have slowly grown since the time I have invested.  The best part is collecting the dividends in the process while waiting for capital growth. 

To me investing is a marathon, not a sprint.  It's time in the markets that count, not timing the market. 

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