r/investing
Maybe I’ve lost more money waiting than buying
Author regrets waiting for pullbacks on quality stocks like COST and MSFT, realizing overthinking valuation cost more than overpaying.
- Waiting for pullbacks on high-quality companies often results in missing out on significant long-term gains.
- Overpaying for great businesses is less costly than missing the ride entirely due to valuation paralysis.
I went through some old watchlists this morning and it was kind of painful. Costco, Visa, Microsoft… same story every time. I’d spend hours researching them, decide they were a bit too expensive, and tell myself I’d buy if they came down. Some did. Most didn’t. At some point I’m starting to wonder whether I’ve made more mistakes from overthinking valuation than from actually overpaying.
Every stock you listed is at least 10% off highs. Whats stopping you now?
He’s still currently waiting to get in.
Waiting for a further sale.
Hes waiting for Ai bubble to pop 😂. Anyway, there is some good things about waiting aswell, I cant count how many times waiting has saved me from a shitty buy.
Experience shows, you must buy, after you tick all your rules and you feel it. This guy he never feels it he needs to jump once
They’re a bit too expensive
This is an unpopular take in this subreddit, but this is the best advertisement for a low cost, high growth index fund. Invest in all the growth stocks for no effort: some lose, but most win.
True - but you'd still have people who think the bubble is just about to burst so no point in buying yet. Doesn't matter if it's an ETF or Stock.
Hi I heard you were talking about me?
Classic mistake
DCA look into it
Time in the market > timing the market
It's that simple. Diversify with an index and give it time. If you don't make money the global economy went to hell and we all have bigger problems.
This is why index funds such as vti are so effective. Might want to try a more proven approach.
I guess never brought is better than brought & sold waaaaaaay too early.
Think tesla like 24bucks!!!
Bitcoin at 10 cents. Spent a day trying to figure out how to buy it. Gave up and didn’t think about it again.
Half cash half stocks
The first 10 years I invested, I was really into individual stocks. I would research extensively. Some picks made gains, some lost, some stayed flat for years.
Then I realized if I just had my money in an ETF, like IVV or QQQ the returns always performed better than my mix of hand picked stocks.
I haven’t bought an individual stock in 15 years.. just ETF it.
When I'm in this mode I just grow my watchlist with more screeners, look at more ideas (not always great ones but still), never had an issue deploying.
There's (almost) always something to buy. But even holding out for extra safety margin, the opportunity never fails to come within a year. You just have to start buying down at levels that look reasonable, bit by bit. Be willing to average up and especially down to get a more 'averaged' price.
u dont have to stock pick, you have endless managed indexes and funds to invest in.
Type 2 errors will kill you over a lifetime
Stocks haven't been reasonably priced in a very long time. It's why Berkshire Hathaway is sitting on hundreds of billions in cash. It's a sure fire way to never lose a lot, and over time, make a lot. But it takes tons of patience. Years. Decades, sometimes.
Hopefully you didn't mean dollar value
That's somewhat arbitrary, ain't it?
It's a shame you got to be today years old before you realised that time is one of your greatest assets in the market
Good stocks, great stocks even, always pull back. Get in on a pull back. If you think 100 is too much, and it pulls back 15-20%, are you still sitting there like: "this is still too much". If so that's why you are missing out. When it pulls back put money in.
Sounds like you're waiting for an "event". That would cause 40-50% pull back. You'll be sitting on the sidelines for a long time thinking that way.
I don't share that feeling.
You fundamentally cannot invest in every single company you want.
Sometimes things are just outside of the scope of your investment strategy/thesis.
Whole generation has never seen a bear market… Will be interesting as fuck to see the comments when it comes. Not if.
I feel personally attacked Did the exact same thing with NVDA in 2021. 'PE is too high, wait for a dip.' Dip never came. Eventually bought at 3x that price
Dude buying into this market is a fucking joke. Buy something that’s actually cheap like commodities and fuck all this overvalued tech and brand name shit. Oil, gold, copper look absolutely fantastic. SpaceX at 100X sales? No thanks! All of the tech is just stupid but Spacex is by far the stupidest.
Meet Bob, world's worst market timer: https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2014/02/worlds-worst-market-timer/
Morale of the story... time in the market, not timing the market.
If you buy S&P 500 today, 10 years from now it will be more expensive. Should that prevent you from buying it because its now too expensive? No. Because 10 years from then it will be even more expensive. Time IN the market.
One thing that helped me avoid the whole “waiting on the sidelines” trap was looking at the market through a cross‑sectional lens instead of trying to time entries.
Basically, compare how different sectors and names are behaving relative to each other over a fixed window, then refresh it every quarter. It turns the focus away from “is now the right time?” and more toward “what’s actually showing consistent strength right now?”
I’ve been running my own version of this for a while, and it’s made decision‑making a lot calmer and has come with really strong outperformance. If you’re into systematic or data‑driven approaches, you’ll know what I mean. Lmk if you wanna know more.