<prompt> Human: This post was originally written for rInvesting, but I thought rPersonalFinance might get a good read out of it. Every day we hear about someone who thinks they can do better than the market by predicting the future, so I decided to ignore the advice and just try it. Heres what happened:Heres a chart so you can follow along on the adventure!March 1st: I should invest today. I cashed out of my target date fund and Im ready to put my strategy Ive worked on for 2 months into play. The market is up right now. Yeah yeah, time in the market vs. timing the market, but squeezing 1 extra per share isnt the same as 20 per share. With a few thousand dollars to burn, its time to do something ative.March 2nd-16th: waiting is boring. Well, the market is going down. Looks like I made the right decision to wait...March 17th: Whatever, forget waiting. The market has started going back up. I bought my first 24 shares of TQQQ at 105.29. Im out of money but fully invested. Let the games begin!March 4th-April 16th: Shit, the market moves around a lot. This was a good emphasis on why we dont time the market. The market fluctuated all over the place and didnt move much in the long term. A bad month for leveraged decay.April 15th: more money, more stock! I came into some extra money and maxed out my IRA for 2014. 32 more shares purchased for 109.98, bringing my average investment to 107.97 for 56 shares.April 17th: Shit. I should have waited. Were back down to 103.79. I could have DCAd down instead of up, but I panicked and bought high.April 17th-April 23rd: Holy shit Im rich. The market reached 117.36 today. Im up nearly 10 per share! Leveraged investing was totally a good decision!April 24th: Lets give this timing thing a shot. Today was the day when it all fell apart. Looking at the past two months of ups and downs, I made the baseless assumption that this breakout would be corrected shortly. I sold my stock to see what happens. All shares sold at 115.48 for a 6.7 locked-in return. Not bad, Im at long-term the average annual SP return in only 6 months. Keep at this pace and I could retire in about 10 years!April 25th: Called it! Well I nailed that right on the head. The market has started its trip back down! I put in a buy-back offer at 105.00, my initial investment value. Lock in over 100 of my profits!April 26th-May 5th: Wheee!: I enjoyed the roller coaster ride down. I just about nailed the price. Unfortunately, I didnt nail it. The market closed at 105.42 and started moving back up. Shit...May 11th: Shit... A market bounce, down 1. Maybe I can get back in. Lets avoid making the same mistake and buy back in at around DCA price of 107.00. We learned a lesson about being greedy and we wont be making the same mistake.May 13th: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice... 108.52 was the bottom out point. Again, I missed my mark by under 2. At least my guesses are accurate. Ill keep the offer in and see what happens over the next few days.May 18th: Well, there goes that plan. The market hits 115.30 Were up near my sell price. Well that whole adventure was pointless...May 21st: ...I fucked up... The market finally clears my buy price. Ive officially lost profit by being out of the market. Today I begrudgingly adjusted my buy price to 112May 27th: I want to get off MR BONES WILD RIDE The market hit 112.61 at the end of the day and then jumped to 118.03. Im never going to make money off this. Lets power through and hope for the best...May 29th Today: I give up. The market hit 114.50 and I watched it. I thought about adjusting my offer for a moment. I didnt. The market then went up and bounced back down to 114.90 while I watched and contemplated. I put in an offer for 115.00 but by the time I finished, the market was up to 115.30. And then 115.70. And now 116.86. And I fucked up big time. 2:15 PM Lesson learned! I will close out this adventure with a filled buy order at 1:55 PM having learned from my mistakes, and buying back in at 116.42. The price may go down to my break-even point. Its gone down since that purchase. But Im OK with that. Ive come too close only to be disappointed too many times, and I will take my 0.9 lost profit as a lesson well learned.TLDR:I was surprisingly accurate within 1 almost every time at predicting the market trend. And even so, hesitation and overconfidence screwed me in a variety of ways each week. The stress of the last three months wasnt worth the 60 lost and the fun of active investing at all. I could never imagine trying something like this with hundreds of thousands of dollars, and Ive learned my lesson. I am prone to gambling addiction and now I can admit it for certain.My advice to followers of this adventure: Dont stray too far from tried and true strategies. You arent psychic and if you need to stick to your own research and the research of others, not your gut feelings. Theres a lot of merit to buy-and-hold strategies. Sometimes the simple strategies are the best ones.  <response>: I could never imagine trying something like this with hundreds of thousands of dollarsIm sure its a lot more fun when you doing it with hundreds of thousands of other peoples dollars. 