Is Buy and Hold Dead?: A Case for a Different Way to Manage Very Important Money

If you could capture 80% of the stock market's gains and avoid 80% of the losses, would you?

A few years ago after I had travelled along the path from Financial Advisor, to Trader, I noticed that the short term horizon of a trader was influencing, and inducing a fear into my long term investment horizon. In other words my "Very Important Money", VIM, was spending way too much time in cash and not reaping the benefits of a market investment strategy. This was because of a very human emotion, fear. I was afraid to expose my safety stash to loss. Even though my training and knowledge said I should do otherwise. I set out to create a system I call 80/80. This system, used the back testing systems, and the many skills I developed while trading to create a market timing tool to get me into 80% of the market gains and out of 80% of the market drops. Over the last several years this tool has worked wonderfully.