I did some market timing Friday. With SARS markets lost -8%, but before last week COVID-19 hadn't reached that level. Which is odd, since entire provinces in China were on lockdown, with no consumer purchases (besides food and medical supplies)... and dozens of factories shut down. Last week the market caught up with reality.
But Friday was all bad news. Online and on TV everyone wondered how long this would go on, and wanted out of the market until then. The markets reflected that too, at -3.3% before lunch on Friday. That's when I knew it was a panic - that nobody was considering good news, and too few people were buying. But what about next week? I can't predict what happens next week - and that's true of any time in the market. But Friday was clearly a day of panic, and I didn't need to predict it - the price drop seemed exaggerated, since it was driven by so much selling, and not enough buying. Any good news could spoil it.
I wound up buying index funds from 11:15 - 11:30 am on Friday. Sometime after that, people reflected... and probably even more over the weekend. After I bought, US stock index (like VTI) rose about +2.5% (from -3.3% to -0.7%) and on Monday another +4%. From what I can tell, I bought at the local market bottom.