Hi,
With year-end holidays and low liquidity, I’m wondering how people usually handle adding capital right before / after New Year.
I’m considering adding a small amount to a mega-cap, very crowded and to a more speculative one, a small cap. And I hesitate when is the best timing, this is my first new year in the investment. Long-term horizon (5–10 years), not trading.
Do you usually:
buy immediately if you have conviction,
wait until early January once volume normalizes,
or split purchases over a few days to reduce short-term noise?
Curious how others think about year-end / early-January timing, especially for high-volatility names?
Thanks again.
Timing question, adding money between Dec 30th and Jan 2?
byu/jauch888888 instocks
Posted by jauch888888
3 Comments
It doesn’t matter on a time scale of 5-10 years, just buy ASAP
For a 5-10 year horizon, the honest answer is it won’t matter, whether you buy dec 30 or jan 3 will be noise in the long run.
That said, here’s how I think about it:
Mega caps (AAPL, MSFT, GOOG, etc.): liquidity is always fine, these trade billions in volume daily – holiday slowdown still means plenty of liquidity, buy whenever you have conviction.
Speculative / smaller names: this is where holiday timing actually matters a bit. lower volume = wider spreads = you might pay more on the bid/ask. If it’s a smaller cap or something volatile, waiting until jan 2-3 when volume normalizes isn’t crazy.
The “january effect”: some people sell losers in december for tax loss harvesting, then buy back in january, this can create slight downward pressure late december and a bounce early january. It’s real but may be not reliable enough to trade around.
Practical approach:
– mega cap: just buy when you’re ready
– speculative: use limit orders (not market orders) to avoid getting bad fills on wide spreads
– if you’re anxious about timing, split it – half now, half first week of january
The bigger risk isn’t buying on dec 31 vs jan 2, it’s overthinking it and not buying at all. A few days of timing noise disappears over a 5-10 year hold.
A speculative megacap??