Hats off to my brave colleagues

As I mentioned last week, Jeremy at Generation X Finance has a new series of posts called "From The Front Lines", in which he chronicles his first-hand experiences with investors' reaction to our current market conditions. So far, he has two posts in the series:

1. From the Front Lines: Investors Selling Stocks in Favor of Fixed Accounts


2. From the Front Lines: Changing Your Risk Tolerance Based on a Bear Market

A lot is being written these days about this being a buying opportunity, but I've recently heard a lot of talk from a few of my colleagues about aggressively timing the market.

I'm sure that, with all the ups-and-downs we've had recently, there is a lot of money to be made (and lost), but I just don't have the courage or recklessness to keep getting in and out and making big wagers with my retirement savings (which currently form the vast majority of my investable assets). I won't go quite so far as to call this a stupid move on my colleagues' part; they're all in their late-20s or early 30s, and have time on their side if they make a misstep. However, I personally can't handle the stress of day trading, whether in a bear or bull market, and I don't have the energy to track stock prices as closely as they do.

No, I think buy-and-hold index investing is right for me. I'm happy with my asset allocation, and I'll keep paying off my debts and dollar-cost-averaging my RRSP contributions.

I wish my colleagues well with their investing adventures, and look forward to some vicarious thrills over the next few months.