> you buy more stocks when they are cheap

but they are unlikely to be cheaper in the future than they are right now (https://www.guggenheiminvestments.com/advisor-resources/inte...).

so if you have the money but defer buying them, you lose out on the time value of money.

I understand this but realize that there are dips of almost 25%

I invest in Index funds for peace of mind as well. That the market remains reasonably happy/sad and I can be for the long run.

People discount this fact but imagine your concerns if you feel like 25% of your savings just evaporated because a guy ten layers detached from you burnt all the money on AI compute and there is no moat (Ahem ahem)

If you don't want peace of mind, people should angel invest or build their own side hustles but then you are getting some savings anyway and its better to invest than keep it in banks (once you have a safe amount saved)

But if you are saving money and still facing 25% crisis. Yeah...

I understand where you are coming from but if you can expect a 50-75% dip in market this time (some companies are 2-5x overvalued just because they slap AI, their P/E ratio's straight up just don't make any sense at all!)

So if you are willing to consider such dip for unforseen amount of time for unforseen returns in future when you can get a pretty safe investment for X amount of years being very liquid and historically in such times there are times when bond prices have been larger than stock prices

If I remember correctly, Intelligent Investors suggests an intelligent approach towards this (in one of the starting chapters of the book)