In plain terms — It is not enough to choose which stock to buy: when you enter and exit matters. Timing is that discipline.
Definition
Transactional timing is the ability to identify when a price is relatively low (buy zone) and when it is relatively high (sell zone), exploiting oscillations instead of suffering them.
Hurst: «buy low, sell high» is useless without answering the question when.
Example — You buy at $20 and sell at $40: you double. If it takes 20 years, you earn ~5%/year. If it takes 6 months with readable cyclicity, the annualized return is a different world (see compounding-and-trading-interval).
Timing vs investing
| Passive investing | Hurst timing | |
|---|---|---|
| Key question | Which company is solid? | When does the favorable cycle start/end? |
| Horizon | Years / decades | Weeks / months (even days) |
| Oscillations | Noise to endure | Signal to read |
Sources
- J. M. Hurst, The Profit Magic of Stock Transaction Timing (1970), ch. 1 - Internet Archive.
- J. M. Hurst, "Cyclic Analysis" (1974) - Reason.