The 5-Day Trap: How Missing Less Than a Week Wiped Out $154,000
Key takeaways
- Equity market returns cluster on a small number of days, especially near market bottoms when fear peaks, making it mathematically impossible for most investors to time entries and exits correctly.
- If you re focused on picking the right stocks and ETFs you may be missing the bigger picture: retirement income.
- On a recent episode of the Money Guy Show titled Even Smart People Make These Massive Money Mistakes, co-host Bo Hanson shared a truly painful reality about personal finance.
The 5-Day Trap: How Missing Less Than a Week Wiped Out $154,000 Dean Drobot / Shutterstock.com David Beren Mon, May 25, 2026 at 10:34 PM GMT+7 5 min read SPY Quick Read SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY) returned 28% over the past year, yet investors who attempted market timing by selling during April’s VIX spike near 30 would have missed the recovery and needed to get the exit and reentry right to match that gain. Fidelity data shows a $10,000 investment from 1988 through 2023 grew to $417,995, but missing just the five best trading days cut final returns to $264,000, and missing fifty best days reduced the portfolio to $32,000—a 92% loss of gains.
Equity market returns cluster on a small number of days, especially near market bottoms when fear peaks, making it mathematically impossible for most investors to time entries and exits correctly.
If you re focused on picking the right stocks and ETFs you may be missing the bigger picture: retirement income. That is exactly what The Definitive Guide to Retirement Income was created to solve, and it s free today. Read more here