now is a fantastic time to buy

I know a lot of people on this thread in particular are poo-pooing the idea of buy and hold as being a "simpleton's" approach to investing, and there is very little reward in it with this last 10 years being perfect proof of that.

Well that may have some truth to them, and if they have better methods such as TA that they think can produce better results then good luck to them.

Personally I doubt it because all meta analysis studies so far have shown TA to give very little advantage.

Lets also keep in mind that:

i) 59 out of 61 10 year periods have resulted in significant share market gains (using djia as an example).

ii) With the share market at starting at an exceptional low, statistically the next ten 10 years is likely to be well above average.

iii) Very few people can reliably pick a market bottom despite the confidence they have in their methods (especially males as pointed out in todays smh), and by the time they realise it has past they have missed significant gains.

There is a great article at
http://www.fool.com/School/BuyandHold/BuyandHold04.htm
which more rigorously compares buy and hold to other methods.

The bottom line is if you have a long term horizon start buying good quality stocks now (with dollar cost averaging) for the long term, then the chances are you could not have done much better.

Have a great day