The length of the average bearmarket is about 14 months. Does that mean you should stay out ofthe market for a year once we hit a bear market? (Photo:Shutterstock)

Do you know how much money you could make if you constantly soldat the market high and bought at the market low? Yourreturns would dwarf those of Warren Buffett.

Does this make Warren Buffett an investing fool? He doesn'tworry about timing the market. And he's been investing long enoughto know.

Christopher Carosa,CTFA, is chief contributing editor for FiduciaryNews.com, a leadingprovider of essential news and information, blunt commentary andpractical examples for ERISA/401(k) fiduciaries, individualtrustees and professional fiduciaries.

"I don't know anybody that could time markets over the years,"Buffett told CNBC viewers in 2017. "You'd be making a terriblemistake if you stay out of a game you think is going to be verygood over time because you think you can pick a better time toenter."

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The length of the average bear market is about 14 months. Doesthat mean you should stay out of the market for a year once we hita bear market? If you did, you'd have missed out on some impressivegains in about half of all the bear markets since 1961.

Three of those bear markets lasted no more than six months,while the shortest (in 1990) lasted only three months.

"Ah, yes," you say. "The length of a bear market is one thing,but it is the length of the recovery that tells the realstory."

You wouldn't be wrong in saying this. The average length torecover is 25 months—roughly two years.

But again, this is only the average. Actual recoveries havetaken as long as 69 months (in the 1973 bear market) and as shortas three months (in the 1980 bear market).

Here's the odd thing about both the 1973 and 1980 bear markets:They both lasted 21 months. Yet one took more than five years torecover from, while the other took only a quarter.

Likewise, the bear markets of 1987 (four months) and 1990 (threemonths) each had similar durations; yet it took 20 months torecover from the 1987 one, while the 1990 bear market was erased inonly four months.

Such is the folly of market timing. With the market having goneup for so long, many people are experiencing a bear market for thevery first time. Over the past 50 years or so, a bear market hasoccurred once every 6.5 years. It's been nearly twice as long sincewe had our last bear market.

It's likely, just as people may have forgotten what a bearmarket feels like, so, too, have they forgotten the dangers ofmarketing timing.

Market timing is the true mark of the investing fool. Itrequires two immaculately correct decisions: when to buy and whento sell. And you have to do it over and over again, for the minutethe wheel comes up red when you've bet it all on black, you loseeverything.

Indeed, in a 2014 CNBC interview, Warren Buffett said, "If theythink they can dance in and out [of the market] and buy and sellstocks, they ought to head for Las Vegas."

Perhaps that's why they call him the Oracle of Omaha.

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