Timing - Good Or Bad, Art Or Science?

The Merriam - Webster dictionary defines timing as:

1. Placement or occurrence in time. (The timing of the sale couldn't have been better) The ability to select the precise moment for doing something for optimum effect. (A boxer with impeccable timing)
2. Observation and recording (as by a stop watch) of the elapsed time of an act, action or process. Sometimes the effect is good and at other times it is bad.

Led Zeppelin probably had it right in their song, "Good Times, Bad Times, you know I had my share."

Some people however seem to have a larger share of good times based on statements we have all heard: "That person has perfect timing," or "Everything he touches turns to gold," or the often used, "He just happened to be in the right place at the right time." Those statements naturally all refer to good timing. But there are also many bad timing statements like: "It just wasn't his time," or "He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time," or "Maybe next time" or "His timing was off."

I am sure we can all recall hearing or reading about some preposterous scheme that bilked investors out of all of their investment. To those that invested, the ploy generally was described as a guaranteed way to make money. The investment returns had never been anything but outstanding. By investing your money in such a highly touted con you would find yourself in the right place at the right time. The conversation about this fraud seemed to imply that the results would be an example of having the 'Midas Touch'. Investors flock to such schemes and tell friends and associates about their, 'Good Timing'.

Certainly we all know that anything to good to be true probably is but for some strange reason it sometimes takes several years before the truth about, 'get-rich', scams is discovered. Invariably, with these schemes and unknown to the investors, the entire program is a masquerade of investing. Everything about the investing program was a scham. The perpetrators of these frauds take the money invested with them and use it to support their lavish life style.

Gullibility is often a trait of a of investors and when it comes to investing and in addition, greed seems to become proportinate to that gullibility. Failure to ask enough questions when investing one's life savings is a serious problem and investors love to chase yield. The results, millions of dollars are lost by investors every year.

I began wondering if 'Timing' which can be good or bad was an art or a science. Various investment schemes seemed to have been operating as if it where both an art and a science. As I researched this topic, I found there are people with all kinds of interesting but unusual views on this subject.

The book written by Johanna Paungger, 'The Art of Timing', emphasizes the benefit of rhythms of the moon having a profound effect on life on earth and resultant benefits of timing activities. Who knows, possibly many investment scheme are all due to the moon being rhythmically in the perpetrator's favor and affords them perfect timing for scamming investors out of their hard earned dollars.