Ramit Sethi (YouTube, Apr 5, 2024) warns that missing the best 3–4 market days over a 10–15 year period can reduce returns by about half, costing investors hundreds of thousands of dollars. He recommends automating monthly investments to avoid emotional timing decisions.
In 10 or 15 year study, if you miss approximately the best three or four days of investing, your return drops by something like half. It is unbelievable. That decision to not invest costs people hundreds of thousands of dollars. And so I find this absolutely amazing. We go our entire lives, we agonize over, should I buy this bag of Skittles? We tell our friend, oh, make sure you Venmo me that extra $3. We do all this stupid stuff that's worthless, and yet we miss out on hundreds of thousands of dollars because we decide we're smarter than the market. Don't do it. This is exactly what I do. Every single month, my money's going in. This is exactly what sophisticated investors do. I'm sure this is what you do every month. Take emotion out of the equation, automate it, and then you never have to try to invest or decide what the news is about. Boom. Your investments are going every single month, first of the month or second of the month, whatever you want, every month.
