There is something doing the rounds at the moment where I think it was Fidelity said that if you missed the 10 best days in the stockmarket, you would have lost out on a lot of growth.

It is all about how if you try and time the market you lose out.

OK, so I did some digging:
Best day 21October 1987 Up 7.9%
Another Good day 14 March 2003, up 6%

Looks great doesn't it?
Except... Here is the headline for 13 March 2003, the day before:


So, if you agree about not timing the market, you would have been invested for longer than the 2 day period and seen your money halve in value from the top, in order to get that 6% rise.
If you had been invested in those 2 days, you were pretty much even for those 2 days.

21 October 1987:

19th October 1987 was Black Monday.
During October 1987 the market dropped overall by 27%, so investing in that period would have been a complete disaster.

These are the only 2 of the top 10 best days I could find with Google, but I wonder whether anyone lese knows which ones they were, or if there is an easy way to find them out.

I am not saying shares are a bad investment generally, because 2003 was the turning point for the FTSE
and during the recession of the 90s Shares did very well.

However, this 10 best days spin needs to be put into context in terms of the prevailing market conditions.

There's an old saying "The bull goes up the stairs, the bear goes out the window."

Investing in shares shouldn't be about trying to find that elusive company that's about to take off, but rather an involvement with the expanding world economy. The bad days will always be more severe than the good days, but you hope to have more of the latter.
I would not invest with a company who are trying to "sex it up" in the manner you describe.

I just dug up this article I remembered reading a little while back:

http://www.moneyextra.com/features/024744.features.html



That's a good return for 1 month, considering we were in a recession!

There is a saying (Baron Rothschild)

"Fortunes are made by buying low and selling too soon."

Which makes a lot of sense to me.