The Straits Times Index (SGX: ^STI) just crossed 4,800.
Your bonus just hit your account.
And suddenly, the pressure is on.
Should you invest now before it climbs higher?
Or wait for a pullback that may never come?
This is the moment where many investors make costly mistakes.
Not because they pick the wrong stocks, but because they rush into decisions they are not ready to make.
Here is something I want you to consider: nobody is rushing you.
The pressure we create
When it comes to investing, we tend to compress decisions into impossibly narrow windows.
The market is up today, so I must act today.
I just received my bonus, so I must deploy it immediately.
But think about it.
If you spent three years saving up a sum of money, why would you insist on investing it all in a single afternoon?
There is nothing wrong with taking one and a half years, half the time you spent saving, to gradually put that money to work.
In fact, spreading your purchases over time can reduce stress and improve outcomes.
This approach has a name: time diversification.
Just as you would not put all your money into a single stock, you do not have to put all your money in at a single moment.
The myth of perfect timing
Part of the pressure comes from the fear of missing out.
What if the market keeps climbing and I never get a better price?
Here is the reality.
You won’t always get the perfect stock price.
When The Smart Dividend Portfolio bought shares of DBS Group (SGX: D01) back in April 2020, it did not get the lowest possible price.
Yet, the stock still did well because the portfolio held the shares for the long term.
Today, those shares are up by over 200% — and that’s before counting the dividends paid over the past six years or so.
The same principle applies today.
If the stocks you want to buy are quality businesses, you do not need to nail the perfect entry point.
You just need to get started and stay invested.
One approach is to buy a little now.
If the market corrects, you will have the chance to buy more.
If it keeps climbing, at least you have some skin in the game.
Either way, you are making progress without betting everything on a single decision.
Commitment includes how you buy
When I talk about committing to the long term, most people think about holding.
But commitment also applies to buying.
My co-founder David Kuo takes this to the extreme: he never sells any stock he buys.
You might think that sounds radical.
But the mindset has an interesting effect.
If you know you will hold a stock forever, you become extraordinarily careful about what you put in your portfolio.
The same logic applies to buying over time.
If you give yourself permission to invest gradually, you remove the anxiety of getting it wrong.
Each purchase becomes a considered decision rather than a panicked reaction.
Get Smart: Invest at your own pace
The stock market will be open tomorrow.
And the day after.
And for decades to come.
If you have done the work to save, you have already demonstrated patience.
Now apply that same patience to investing.
Read about the businesses you want to own.
Understand what you are buying.
And deploy your capital at a pace that lets you sleep at night.
The greatest investors are not the fastest.
They are the ones who stay in the game long enough to let compounding do its work.
Nobody is rushing you but yourself.
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Disclosure: Chin Hui Leong owns shares of DBS Group.
