Subject: Re: OT Cash balances keep soaring
Use a decent timing method to signal when to get out of stocks and when to get back in.

This reduces the average long-term return but also greatly reduces the deep drops of a big bear market.

It reduces the average long-term return, which is a fair exchange for the protection is provides. BUT, it reduces most of the big drops, but not all of them, sometimes it does not work, and worse, it sometimes causes an exit after a big drop. Maybe it happens only once every 50 or 75 years, but if you hit that "once" at te wrong time, you could be very negatively affected financially for the remainder of your life.

Question: How long do you consider "short investment life"?

Now that I am retired, I think about this a lot. While I may have 30+ years left, it is more likely to be a bit under 30 years. So I have to think about using the typical 30-year investing horizon at this point. Maybe I should be using 25 now? I don't really know ...