your column
last week, you mentioned that studies have shown that investing a lump sum all at once usually produces better returns than investing in stages. Can you elaborate? He responds: In one study, U.S. money management firm Fisher Investments compared the lump-sum and gradual investing strategies over 20-year periods beginning in 1926 and ending in 2009. The lump-sum investor was assumed to have put the entire sum into the U.S. market at the start of the 20-year period, while the gradual investor deployed the money in stages over the first 12 months, following a process known as dollar-cost averaging .
“The reason is simple: More often than not, stocks move higher. You benefit more from being invested more of the time than you do trying to avoid near-term wiggles,” Ken Fisher, chairman of Fisher Investments, wrote in his 2011 book,. “DCA really only helps if you know there is a falling market ahead.