(So) What If You Miss the Market’s N Best Days?
aqr.com · 2025-06-05 · tier T2
Source: Memo · aqr.com dated 2025-06-05. Auto-generated factual summary. Not investment advice. Verify before acting.
An investor revisits a 1999 paper rejected for claiming a common anti-timing argument was flawed. The rejected paper argued that the "missing the N best days" framing is logically incoherent: it assumes an investor times perfectly but incompetently (selling before the best days). The author notes the symmetric "missing the N worst days" argument would equally support timing. Over 25 years of out-of-sample data confirms the original thesis. The investor argues the real case against market timing is simpler: most investors lack skill, and random deviations from diversified portfolios harm returns. He calls on practitioners to stop using the flawed argument and instead make honest cases against timing.
Citations · 6
“The stated reason was "everyone knows what you're saying already, and nobody really believes the bad argument."”
p#3 · confidence 95%
“if you time the market and all you ever do is N times sell all your stocks and go to cash for a day, and precisely the next day, one the best days ever in market history occurs, then that would be bad.”
p#6 · confidence 92%
“Someone, quite stupidly, arguing market timing could just as easily produce the "what if you missed the worst N days?" table – which would argue, again quite stupidly, that you should time the market”
p#7 · confidence 93%
“Dan did the out-of-sample test (and extended the results to the near-present using the more common daily, rather than monthly, frequency). It turns out that the 1999 paper held up amazingly well over the next quarter century.”
p#5 · confidence 94%
“the reason to avoid it is that you're likely bad at it and doing it without skill is actually harmful, as you are randomly deviating from a properly diversified portfolio.”
p#8 · confidence 95%
“even today this very silly reason for avoiding market timing is being promoted here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here by many who should know better.”
p#4 · confidence 93%
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Cliff Asness
AQR Perspectives · quant value and factor investing
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