Meet Bob Parish. Mr. Parish lost about 70% of his retirement savings in the 2000-02 bear market, after the tech bubble burst.

Feeling burned by his financial advisor, he struck out alone with what he had left and set out to time the market. Timing the market is generally considered a fool’s errand by most financial advisors, but in the case of Mr. Parrish – market timing worked, or so it would seem.

Parrish managed to catch most of the market gains between 2003 – 2005 but turned bearish in 2006. Still, despite being early on his bearishness, he did gain an annualized 23% since 2002. He’s been in bear funds since 2006 and doubled his money in 2008 – when most were seeing their portfolios cut in half!

So, sounds like he’s pretty adept at timing the market right?

Maybe, then again, the past decade has been pretty remarkable in its uniqueness. We’ve experienced a return fear, the run up in commodities and talk of reemergence of inflation, stagflation and possible 2nd great depression. Given that there is very little that is average about the 2000’s, it will be interesting to see how Mr. Parrish and his timing are over the next 5-10 years.

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