Time In The Market > Timing The Market

The human brain is laughably terrible at being able to correctly predict when you should buy and sell investments. Here are some fun facts that show the benefit of staying invested for the long term.
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1) Looking at data going back to 1930, if an investor missed the S&P 500′s 10 best days each decade, the total return would stand at 28%. If, on the other hand, the investor held steady through the ups and downs, the return would have been 17,715%.
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2) The U.S. stock market has only been down over a 10-year period twice, following the Great Depression and the Great Financial Crisis. Even if you invested at the very top, as long as you held and didn't panic sell, you recovered the losses and made profit.
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3) Since 1872, the U.S. stock market has gone up in 69% of all years on record, and declined in 31% of years. So in any given calendar year you have roughly a 7 in 10 chance of being up.
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4) Bigger is not always better. Since 1957, the 10 largest stocks in the S&P 500 have underperformed an equal-weighted index of the remaining 490 stocks by 2.4% per year.
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5) Since 2003, 96.4% of U.S. large cap mutual funds (IE, stock pickers) underperformed the S&P 500. Buy & hold the index. It's cheaper, easier, and performs better.