The whole pile or one shovel full at a time?

[Wordstew]

Would you throw a large lump some of $$ the stock market today given the recent market downward trend or would you dollar cost average

[wwweb]

How large  is a large lump of money?

My general rule of thumb is that extremely large sums (e.g. more than a year's salary or 30% your savings) should be dollar cost averaged into the market over about 3 years. This reduces your expected return, but also significantly reduces the risk that bad timing (luck) results in below average market returns for decades.

If it is only a moderately large sum of money (e.g. a bonus equivalent to a few months salary) then I just invest it as I would any other savings.

Notice that at no point did I mention the recent market behavior - trying to make decisions that way is a losing game.

[Giro]

I tend to agree with the last poster.  My DH and I put $2500 in our personal account every two weeks.  Our 401k is also invested every two weeks.  If we have a windfall of more than $20k or so, I like to break it up into smaller amounts.  4x $5k would work in that scenario.  If we are talking about $100K or more, I would break it up over a year just to avoid any dips in the market.