Mr. Foghorn Leghorn,
First of all, your deliberate use of caps to emphasize simple English words is kind of funny. I presume if we heard you speak your message, you would do the same thing verbally, saying those words louder, as if that made your ideas correct.
The notion that no one can predict when something will happen, even me, is not a reason to fail to respond to it as it is happening. No one can predict when a car will come down a particular street, but the truth of that "no one" principle does not make the effort to get out of the way when it is heading right toward you as you stand in the street, an incorrect one. In fact, it is what an ordinary person would do, not even a clever one.
Kids (who are watching at home), don't fall for the "no one can predict" fallacy. It's a truism that is no excuse for failing to analyze what you can see and measure. The Foghorn Leghorns of the world will fixate on something like the inability to predict the future with precision as a reason to stop analyzing and go all caps nuts when they think the truism is the only wisdom a person can have. No, despite the inability to predict the future, there is a sweet spot between just sitting passively in the market, fully invested, and knowing exactly what will happen.
The "all of the time" data performance measure is not the worst today, for two principal reasons. First, the market is rather high now, favoring that type of analysis. Second, some people have worse strategies, like buying high and selling low. Those data are lumped in by the "all of the time" crowd as evidence of the weakness of market timing. It's a blend of the least informed people with the best informed, yielding a somewhat low avergage for market timing.
There's a variety of simple, elementary school simple, metrics for determining when the market is high, or low. Save your money for when it is low and buy. Once you've made a good return, get out and save your money again for the next low. You never have to capture the absolute high, or the absolute low, just be selling when high and buying when low. It's elementary school easy to be on the right side of the biggest half dozen market moves of a thirty year period. It's lazy, anti-intellectual, and very expensive just to sit there and time only your final exit from the market.
My perspective, perhaps very wrong, but mine nontheless, to those who got in at or below 7000, is as follows. Get out now. Save your money for the next down market, notably below the 11,500ish of the present. I don't now where the market is headed, but I do know that a gain of 4500 on an investment of 7000 is an over 60% gain. Take it off of the table and watch the hold forever people get giddy as the market goes up, and then listen to them talking about the next decade with hope of getting the money they want, after the market goes back down. When it's low and you, not them, are ready to buy more shares in the down market than they have, because you have high market cash, get back in and ride it up again.
Three generations of people in my family did this. No one has a math degree, or uses complicated technical analysis. They look at the biggest, simplest numbers, and listen and buy stocks when people hate them and sell them when people love them. All are careful spenders and thrifty. It's an anti-greed strategy and it pays nicely. The first generation, that got in the market over 50 years ago, took it for granted that outperforming the market was the only reason to invest there. The people who just park money there interminably get losses that no one ever need suffer, mixed in with the hope of a rebound.
We buy only once or twice a decade, sell only once or twice a decade and stay out about half of the time, preserving the gains and saving more money for the next down cycle. Two generations are still living. One is completely out, the other is 95% out, looking very intently at moving that last 5%. Both are saving money for the next down cycle that may come next year, or 2015, or later. We don't know, but we are getting ready for it.
We've missed every peak and every valley in the market, never timing it perfectly. No one can. We have hit each one pretty well, coming out far ahead of those who just ride it out of some misguided principle that not knowing everything means you should not act based on what you do know.