<prompt> Human: The short answer is no. The full article is below:Can Market Timers Beat the Index?Even those who do beat a buy-and-hold strategy in one market cycle have no greater odds of success in the next cycle. Keep points in case the article is behind a paywall for you: The vast majority of professional advisers who try to get in and out of the stock market at the right time end up doing worse than those who simply buy and hold through bull and bear markets alike. Even those few who beat a buy-and-hold strategy during one period rarely beat it in the next one. Investment advisers who perform well or poorly during one bear market rarely perform the same way during the next bear market. The 20 best market-timers during the 2000-02 bear market did no better than average during the 2007-09 bear market. And the 20 worst performers from 2000-07 actually made money in the 2007-09 bear market. Market timers reduce volatility, but they pay for that with lower gains. A simple portfolio split 80-20 between a stock index fund Vanguard Total Stock Market and bond index fund Vanguard Total Bond Market made more money, but with the same volatility. It would have made 3.7 per year from 2000 through today. Another simple portfolio divided equally among U.S. stocks and bonds, international stocks and bonds, gold, and a money-market fund would have made 5.2 from 2000 through today.  <response>: Can they? Sure.Will any particular market timer beat the market? Probably not.Is it a better bet to invest your age as a percentage in bonds, and the rest in something like a SP500 Index fund? Most likely. 