The main benefit of dollar-cost averaging is that it reduces the risk of making a bet at the wrong time. Market timing is among the hardest things to do when it comes to trading or investing. Often, even if the direction of a trade idea is correct, the timing might be off – which makes the entire trade incorrect. Dollar-cost averaging helps mitigate this risk.
If you divide your investment into smaller chunks, you’ll likely have better results than if you were investing the same amount of money in one large chunk. Making a purchase that’s poorly timed is surprisingly easy, and it can lead to less than ideal results. What’s more, you can eliminate some biases from your decision-making. Once you commit to dollar-cost averaging, the strategy will make the decisions for you.
Dollar-cost averaging, of course, doesn’t completely mitigate risk. The idea is only to smooth the entry into the market so that the risk of bad timing is minimized. Dollar-cost averaging absolutely won’t guarantee a successful investment – other factors must be taken into consideration as well.
As we’ve discussed, timing the market is extremely difficult. Even the biggest trading veterans struggle to accurately read the market at times. As such, if you have dollar-cost averaged into a position, you might also need to consider your exit plan. That is, a trading strategy for getting out of the position.
Now, if you’ve determined a target price (or price range), this can be fairly straightforward. You, again, divide up your investment into equal chunks and start selling them once the market is closing in on the target. This way, you can mitigate the risk of not getting out at the right time. However, this is all completely up to your individual trading system.
Some people adopt a “buy and hold” strategy, where the goal is to never sell, as the purchased assets are expected to continually appreciate over time. Take a look at the performance of the Dow Jones Industrial Average in the last century below.
Performance of the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) since 1915.
While there are short-term periods of recession, the Dow has been in a continual uptrend. The purpose of a buy and hold strategy is to enter the market and stay in the position long enough so that the timing doesn’t matter.
However, it’s worth keeping in mind that this kind of strategy is usually geared towards the stock market and may not apply to the cryptocurrency markets. Bear in mind that the performance of the Dow is tied to a real-world economy. Other asset classes will perform very differently.
Dollar-cost averaging example
Let’s look at this strategy through an example. Let’s say we’ve got a fixed dollar amount of $10,000, and we think it’s a reasonable bet to invest in Bitcoin. We think that the price will likely range in the current zone, and it’s a favorable place to accumulate and build a position using a DCA strategy.
We could divide the $10,000 up into 100 chunks of $100. Each day, we’re going to buy $100 worth of Bitcoin, no matter the price. This way, we’re going to spread out our entry to a period of about three months.
Now, let’s demonstrate the flexibility of dollar-cost averaging with a different game plan. Let’s say Bitcoin has just entered a bear market, and we don’t expect a prolonged bull trend for at least another two years. But, we do expect a bull trend eventually, and we’d like to prepare in advance.
Should we use the same strategy? Probably not. This investment portfolio has a much larger time horizon. We’d have to be prepared that this $10,000 will be allocated to this strategy for another few years. So, what should we go for?
We could divide the investment into 100 chunks of $100 again. However, this time, we’re going to buy $100 worth of Bitcoin each week. There are more or less 52 weeks in a year, so the entire strategy will be executed in over a little less than two years.
This way, we’ll build up a long-term position while the downtrend runs its course. We’re not going to miss the train when the uptrend starts, and we have also mitigated some of the risks of buying in a downtrend.
But keep in mind that this strategy can be risky – we’d be buying in a downtrend after all. For some investors, it could be better to wait until the end of the downtrend is confirmed before entering. If they wait it out, the average cost (or share price) will probably be higher, but a lot of the downside risk is mitigated in return.
Dollar-cost averaging calculator
You can find a neat dollar-cost averaging calculator for Bitcoin on dcabtc.com. You can specify the amount, the time horizon, the intervals, and get an idea of how different strategies would have performed over time. You’ll find that in the case of Bitcoin, which is in a sustained uptrend over the long-term, the strategy would have been consistently working quite well.
Below, you can see the performance of your investment if you’ve bought just $10 worth of Bitcoin every week for the last five years. $10 a week doesn’t seem that much, doesn’t it? Well, as of April 2020, you would’ve invested in total about $2600, and your stack of bitcoins would be worth about $20,000.
Performance of buying $10 of BTC every week for the last five years.
The case against dollar-cost averaging
While dollar-cost averaging can be a lucrative strategy, it does have its skeptics as well. It undoubtedly performs best when the markets experience big swings. This makes sense, as the strategy is designed to mitigate the effects of high volatility on a position.
Dollar-cost averaging is a redeemed strategy for entering into a position while minimizing the effects of market volatility. It involves dividing up the investment into smaller chunks and buying at regular intervals.
The main benefit of this strategy is that it alleviates the need to time the market, which can be challenging. Investors who prefer not to actively monitor the markets can still participate effectively using the DCA method.
However, some skeptics argue that dollar-cost averaging may cause investors to miss out on gains during bull markets. That said, missing out on some gains isn't the end of the world dollar-cost averaging remains a convenient and effective investment strategy for many.
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