Missing a handful of the best days costs a big part of the return, and they come close to the worst ones.
Time in the market beats timing it.
€10,000 in shares, 2004 to 2023. You choose. The other stays in.
The best days come right after the worst ones. Waiting for calm is how you miss them.
← Red LinesRed Line 28 of 48 The idea The numbers Why it happens Where it bends This game’s numbersHow strong the proof isBGood proof, with limits Where it comes from
A few days bring a large part of the gains, and nobody knows in advance which. Jumping out to avoid the bad days usually means missing the good ones too.
Over 20 years of the main US index, missing just the 10 best days cut the yearly return almost in half. At 8% a year, €10,000 becomes about €47,000; at half that, about €22,000.
Most of the best days came within two weeks of the worst ones, in the middle of the scare. Those who sold in the panic were out when the rebound came.
How expensive the market is still shapes what you can expect from it over the next years.
S&P 500 yearly returns, Aswath Damodaran, NYU SternLargest daily changes in the S&P 500, WikipediaMissing the best days, J.P. Morgan Asset Management, Guide to Retirement 2024
The signals people use to time the market mostly failed when tested on later years, though how expensive the market is still says something over long spans.
- A Comprehensive Look at the Empirical Performance of Equity Premium Prediction Ivo Welch & Amit Goyal, Review of Financial Studies 21(4), 1455-1508, 2008
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · How we grade
- A Strong proof: Many good studies or long official data, from different teams or countries, point the same way.
- B Good proof, with limits: Solid studies agree on the direction, but the size varies, or the data covers few places or few kinds of people.
- C Mixed proof: Some good studies for, some against, or the evidence covers only part of the line.
- D Thin proof: Mostly one book’s argument, one survey or stories. It may be wise, but it has not been tested well.
- = True by the sums: It follows from arithmetic, so no study can overturn it. We still show what real data says.
Charles D. Ellis, Winning the Loser’s Game (1998). In our words, not quoted.
See it in numbers: Best days (From Zero)
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