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Is now a bad time
to invest?
Waiting can feel safer. It also means choosing when to get back in. Here is what the timing tests found.
Evidence snapshot:
Investing at once won more often.
If you already have a lump sum ready to invest, one choice is to invest it now. Another is to spread it into equal monthly payments, often called dollar-cost averaging, or DCA.
Rolling one-year windows in which investing at once beat spreading the money over 12 monthly payments.
The test used the S&P 500 over windows within 2019 to 2025. It describes this historical sample, not the chance that investing today will win.
Spreading purchases keeps some money out of the market for longer. That can soften the effect of an immediate fall, but it also means missing some gains if prices rise. Regularly investing new salary is a different question: that cash was not all available on day one.
Source: our research snapshot, 9 Oct 2026. The exact 82 start dates, cash treatment for this test and trading-cost assumptions have not been provided. See the method limits.
Waiting for a dip was roughly a coin flip.
A separate test started near market highs, used a two-year horizon, and assumed uninvested cash earned 3.5% a year while waiting.
Depending on the waiting rule, waiting beat investing immediately 35% to 68% of the time. On average, the two approaches finished within about 5% of each other in the research summary.
The rule matters more than the phrase “buy the dip”.
How large a fall triggers a purchase? What happens if that fall never arrives? Without a trigger and a deadline, waiting can become a decision you keep postponing.
The specific waiting rules and the definition of the reported 5% gap have not been provided. These results cannot tell you which dip to wait for or establish a reliable timing strategy.
Falls happen even in good years.
A market can suffer a sharp fall during the year and still finish the year higher. These figures show the largest fall from an earlier high within each calendar year, not the full-year return.
The fall you had to sit through
S&P 500: biggest fall from an earlier high within each calendar year. 2026 ends on 9 October.
| Year | S&P 500 | Nasdaq 100 |
|---|---|---|
| 2019 | -6.6% | -11.0% |
| 2020 | -34.1% | -28.6% |
| 2021 | -5.4% | -10.9% |
| 2022 | -25.4% | -35.2% |
| 2023 | -10.3% | -10.9% |
| 2024 | -8.4% | -13.6% |
| 2025 | -19.0% | -22.9% |
| 2026 (to 9 Oct) | -9.1% | -11.8% |
Source: our research snapshot using Yahoo daily adjusted closes, 9 Oct 2026. Values are falls from peaks, expressed as negative returns. These are not a maximum for future losses.
Choose the schedule before the headlines.
If the money is suitable for shares and available now, this sample favoured investing at once. That does not guarantee a good entry price.
If spreading purchases helps you stick with a plan, set the amounts and dates in advance. Understand that keeping cash aside can reduce returns when markets rise. If a large fall would threaten essential spending, revisit the amount going into shares first.
Do not confuse a comfortable entry schedule with a suitable overall allocation. Both decisions matter.