if you are on the cusp of needing to do a backdoor roth
In other words, you make way too much to fund a deductible tIRA so the only choice is doing Roth through the front door or back door, correct?
should you wait until the end of the year to fund your traditional IRA and then immediately roll over to roth or would it be better to just fund the IRA when you can and then do the conversion once you have looked at earnings for the year?
Roth is better than a traditional non-deductible. Full stop.
You could wait to see if you can do a direct Roth instead of a backdoor Roth. If you wait, you will either be happy the market dropped or sad that the market increased while you waited....