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To: Guy Gordon who wrote (4151)	1/11/2000 11:09:00 AM
From: duncan moyer	Respond to of 24042

RE "Any investor in U.S. stocks who was out of the market for the best 1% of trading days 1963-93........missed 95% 0f the market's gains." I don't believe this statistic. I don't have any evidence against it, but I didn't want it to pass unchallenged. From: A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton G. Malkiel (c)1996 p162 Using technical analysis for market timing is especially dangerous. Since there is a long-term uptrend in the stock market, it can be very risky to be in cash. An investor who frequently carries a large cash position to avoid periods of market decline is very likely to be out of the market during some periods where it rallies smartly. During the decade of the 1980's, the Standard & Poor's 500 Index provided a very handsome total return (including dividends and capital changes) of 17.4 percent. But, an investor who happened to be out of the market and missed just the ten best days of the decade--out of a total of 2,568 trading days--was up only 12.6 percent. The point is that market timers risk missing the infrequent large sprints that are the big contributors to performance.