{"id":11960,"date":"2026-05-01T09:30:03","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T23:30:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/investors-admin.raizinvest.com.au\/?p=11960"},"modified":"2026-04-14T09:57:48","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T23:57:48","slug":"time-in-the-market-beats-timing-the-market","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/raizinvest.com.au\/investors\/blog\/time-in-the-market-beats-timing-the-market\/","title":{"rendered":"Time in the market beats timing the market"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Have you ever opened your Raiz app and seen your return in the negative?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe you\u2019ve been watching the news and seen that big red arrow when commentators talk about the share market falling?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s normal to feel a bit uneasy, especially when you\u2019re new to investing. Seeing red can trigger that instinct to react straight away. But when it comes to investing, what feels big in the short term often looks like just a blip when you zoom out and look at the longer-term picture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

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Why short-term moves feel dramatic<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Day to day and week to week, markets move a lot. Prices rise one moment and dip the next. Lots of things influence that movement, including global news, interest rates, company earnings and investor sentiment. None of these alone can predict where markets will go next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trying to guess the \u201cperfect\u201d time to buy or sell is called timing the market. It sounds clever, but even professional investors find it hard to do consistently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s where time in the market comes in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A simple piece of advice many investors use is: if in doubt, zoom out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What this looks like in real life: When you look at a short-term chart, a drop can feel huge. It can make you question your strategy. But when you change the timeframe to five, ten or fifteen years (the zoom out part), those same drops often look tiny compared with the overall growth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that\u2019s the whole point. Investing is a long-term game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Some long-term context<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The Australian share market is a good example. Between 1900 and 2023, it returned an average of around 13% per annum, but not every year was a \u201cgood year\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Across that period, around 100 years had positive returns, while 24 years had negative returns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So yes, we have to take some bad years with the good. But here\u2019s the catch: we don\u2019t have a crystal ball. We don\u2019t know when the bad years are coming. That\u2019s why time in the market (how long you stay invested) generally beats trying to time the market (picking the perfect moment to buy and sell).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

See the report here: https:\/\/files.marketindex.com.au\/files\/statistics\/historical-returns-infographic-2024.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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What to do when you see red<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Seeing a negative return in your Raiz app can be uncomfortable. That\u2019s a natural human reaction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead of reacting straight away, try this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n