The “Best 10 Days” Myth Is Really About Time
On the S&P 500, missing the best 10 days over multi-decade periods has historically cut total returns by roughly 40–50%, depending on the window.
This is usually presented as an argument against timing—that because you can’t know when those days occur, you must always remain invested.
But that framing quietly admits something else: returns are not evenly distributed across time.
They are concentrated into very small temporal windows.
What that statistic is really saying is that most participants cannot author tempo. If you can’t interact with time precisely, your only defense is constant exposure.
But once you recognize that returns are generated in bursts—often clustered into minutes, not days—the conclusion flips.
This year, I’ve demonstrated the inverse: avoiding some of the worst days entirely while aligning with the best minutes of each session, where the actual repricing occurs.
When you can operate at that resolution, “missing the best 10 days” becomes irrelevant.