The key is to buy on the way down.....and the way up! Dollar cost average investing has never, not worked in the history of the stock market. The part that screwed me was we used several money management firms in the early part of our investing. They were losing money in up years of the market. Once I took over the account and bought high quality stocks...we started making huge gains. The money management companies fees were more than our gains when they had us in mutual funds and target date funds.