I am puzzled how investors don't have any $ looking for these opportunities. Perhaps over-budgeting, cash flow issues, or lack of an emergency fund. Or all of these?
None of the above. I don't know what over-budgeting is (I thought if you budget, you have money to invest? Idk, I don't budget at all, I spend what I need and invest the rest), I have no cash flow issues (save 80+% of the cash coming in), and no, I have no emergency fund, and even if I did, I wouldn't use it for this, it's not an emergency. If I decided an emergency fund was needed, I'd save it for that purpose. If you feel that it's okay to lower it right now, you may understand why I don't have one at all.
What puzzles me is idle cash.
I assume you have a written AA which has a cash component. I'm not a fan, but I'm okay with it. The only reason then to be buying on these dips with it would be because the drop was big enough (unlikely, unless you have a very small portfolio) that it hit your rebalancing band because your cash portion got too large.
If you don't have a cash portion in your AA, why do you have idle cash sitting around?
In other words, why do you have "$ looking for these opportunities." -- my money has so many opportunities if it's just sitting around looking it's not working. That's not good.
All my money coming in each month that doesn't get spent gets invested. When the market dips, my cost basis is lower. But I don't shove "extra" money into the market, because that implies that if the market DIDN'T dip, I'd keep that extra money and... do what with it? I don't even know.
I invest as much as I can, all the time. If the market is down, great. If not, fine. But when it's high it's not like I invest less than I can, so I have idle cash sitting there. That would just be silly.
EDIT: Market timing aside, of course. I was assuming based on your other posts Joet that you're not huge into market timing, but apparently I may be wrong.