PS I just realized that my “path dependent” definition is why we also disagree on your scenario of selling before a potentially risky event, and immediately buying back in after it.

That’s completely path-dependent: it helps you if prices go down that day, and it hurts you if they go up. It’s got nothing to do with valuation or investment merits, it’s all about what the price is going to do on that one day. That’s why I mentally categorize it as market timing, because it’s all about the path of prices on that one day.

But of course “market timing” is just a concept and it’s possible to have different definitions for it. I see your point, that you aren’t really expressing a view in what prices are doing, so I can see why you don’t think that phrase applies.

So I could go either way on that one (and it doesn’t really matter anyway… you could have called it something entirely different and my original point on my first post would have remained). But not on the value investing thing from my last post… that is absolutely NOT market timing.