Most, if not all, of the investors I encountered agree that it is extremely difficult to time the market successfully, meaning trying to buy at absolute bottom and sell at absolute high to earn maximum profits. But I see many investors deciding their buying and selling that are supposedly based on sound rules and experience, but are actually timing the market unknowingly. I believe the underlying reason for such behaviour is due to emotional biases in investing. One is the anchoring bias, and the other is the tendency to project future price movement based on recent patterns. For the latter I can't find an official name for it. I suspect it could be Status Quo bias. Anchoring and 'Status Quo' Bias Investopedia define Anchoring Bias as 'the use of irrelevant information, such as the purchase price of a security, as a reference for evaluating or estimating an unknown value of ......