LogFAQs > #962134276

red sox 777 posted...

Oh interesting. Guess I've misunderstood the term for ages!

But uh, I guess the conclusion is the same. DCA is a suboptimal strategy. The recommended advice always given (assuming you cannot time the market) is to maximize the amount of money you have in the market at all times. Buy when stocks are down, buy when they are up, buy whenever you have money to put in. I guess this is "lump sum" investing if you have a big lump sum to invest, but if you have already invested most of your money this looks a lot of like investing at regular intervals because you invest more when you get paid from work.

Pretty much. I had been saving for a year's worth of expenses until I figured that that's too long. So it turned into a down payment fund, and now I'm just putting it in gradually into stocks because I still can't buy a home in LA and I'm not moving out of my mom's house until I can afford to buy; I refuse to be a renter.

So, I have a lump sum I can invest, but I'm too risk adverse to actually drop it in at once. I'm dropping in $1,000 per week until it's down to my emergency fund (I'm putting more into investments than my income each moth currently), plus whatever I feel like betting on in another brokerage.