[rsmurano]

If you don’t understand the stock market, you shouldn’t be in it and you shouldn’t pay someone to manage your money when you don’t have a clue what they are doing. Most financial advisors have a business model to make money whether you do or not. How many investors are paying advisors this year while you are losing big?
I’m a boglehead which means I mainly invest in a few (I think it was around 8) index funds mainly from vanguard that are low risk, high returns, low cost, high dividend, no loads, and very low turnover (for taxes) and I held some of these for 20 years until this year.
I also buy individual stocks that I know well like apple for example.
As for knowing what’s going on in the market, it’s not hard to know that you should have sold apple a year ago and you shouldn’t be in the Nasdaq this past year (in general terms). When apple gets into the $110-$120 area, I’ll buy, and if I miss it, I miss it.
Have you seen the multiple bear market rallies this year? You could have made good money if you got in and then got out before the market tanked again.
Timing the market: I will wait and will miss the early turnaround that will occur in the future (maybe wait for a 5% gain before getting back in) so I will not be able to sell at the all time high or buy at the all time lows, but it will be a few % either way before I react. Having cash gives you 2 benefits: you aren’t losing big right now (and when it gets bad you can kiss off dividends like what happened in the 2000 and 2008 downturns) and cash will give me the opportunity to buy funds/stocks at a much cheaper price than what I sold them for