Not trying to make a super deep point with this post, but I just got off on a tangent thinking about the constant refrain of "miss X number of best days and your return goes down to X bad return" that you encounter on pretty much every investing sub around. Since we know that really good days tend to occur around the same time as really bad days, it would make more sense to talk about what would happen if you missed X number of really good and really bad days. It was actually somewhat hard to find anyone who did that math, but [these guys did](https://occaminvesting.co.uk/problems-with-the-x-best-days-argument/), and found that missing both the top and bottom 25 market days a year over time led to signficant, but not crazy, outperformance of the S&P 500.
IDK if that actually changes the rationale for a retail investor just buying and holding whenever possible - that idea is based on a lot more than just attaining the maximum possible return, but I do think it makes a solid case that you shouldn't feel too bad for sitting on the sidelines when the market gets volatile. Right now I'm feeling like I might have made the first good decision of my investing life selling all my tech stock 2 months ago...
