Market timing

One of the reasons that people were advised to put their money into a stock fund and leave it there was because statistics have shown that those who tried to time the market (day traders) did not do as well as the market in general. The past 20 plus years have offered additional reasons to get in a fund and stay there. The wide fluctuations in the market these days are because large investors like pension funds use computers to decide when to buy and sell and these computers follow one another so when one program says to buy they all jump on the bandwagon. It is amusing to watch each day the experts explain what happened to the market yesterday and why it happened. Often times the reason the market went up yesterday is the same reason given why the market went down today. Recently the reason for the wild fluctuations are blamed on the war in Ukraine. There were bombings yesterday and the market went down. There are bombings today and the market is going up. Now people are trying to day trade by following the computers, the thinking being that if it went up yesterday it will probably go down today. Who knows maybe that works. One thing for sure is that no one knows what will happen tomorrow.