I tried market timing for exactly one calendar year as an experiment. Here are the results.

Starting in January, I held about $30,000 in cash instead of investing it, waiting for a 'better entry point' after hearing a lot of bear market predictions. The market went up 18% that year. By December I had earned roughly 4.5% in HYSA interest.

Cost of market timing attempt: approximately $4,000 in missed gains (the difference between 18% and 4.5% on $30,000).

I invested the full amount in December, having learned my lesson.

The deeper issue isn't that my prediction was wrong — it's that no one consistently times the market correctly. The people who got out before the 2020 crash mostly got back in late. The people who got out before the 2022 decline often stayed out too long. The distribution of market timing outcomes is worse than the distribution of 'stay invested' outcomes by a meaningful margin.