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Hello All, I remember opening my first investment account at the height of the dot com bubble in 2000. I, like many others, was taken in by the promise of easy gains that seemingly would continue indefinitely. The whole concept of value had changed and you no longer had to demonstrate profitability to have a sky high valuation. Unfortunately, my timing was terrible and within a month my portfolio value had plummeted as people realized that simply attaching .com to your business did not make it a viable investment. I was young and inexperienced with investing and it took me several years to recover from the loss. Of course, had I not been scared off and rather continued to invest $10,000 a year in an an S&P 500 fund from 2000 to 2021, I would have had a net gain of approximately $470,000 according to this calculator and a total investment of $680,000 which demonstrates the power of investing (despite there being several market crashes along the way). I certainly regret not having taken this path, but I have learnt a lot along the way. When I started investing, the quantity of investment options and guidance available was limited. These days, however, there are numerous low cost strategies which allow you to simply transfer funds on a regular basis and forget it. The key is to not act irrationally when there are swings in the market (as with the past couple of weeks where it seems like the market has been in a bit of a free fall) and to believe that over time your investment will grow as long, as you stay the course. If you have yet to open an investment account, you should do so as soon as possible especially for TFSAs and RRSPs. Your contributions can be anywhere from $1 up to the annual maximums allowed by CRA. Having the account available means that you can either contribute a periodic fixed amount or whenever you have excess funds. Transfers from your regular bank account are very straightforward and once set up, take a couple of clicks. Even if you don’t have any money to invest now, opening the accounts (many of which are completely free) removes one of the obstacles. So in answer to the question posed in my title - when is the best time to invest? The answer is now, even if it is only in small increments. There is a saying that goes “time in the market beats timing the market”. This means that you are more likely to earn greater returns by investing as soon as possible rather than waiting for the market to go down.
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