Because Louie knows that time is more important than timing when investing.

Meet Louie the Loser - he invested $10,000 a year in one of America's oldest and largest mutual funds, Investment Company of America, over the past 20 years. Because his timing is terrible, it is not surprising that he somehow picked the worst possible day of the year to invest - the day the unmanaged Dow Jones Industrial Average peaked.

How has Louie done?

That is why he is smiling. Because his investment has done almost as well as it would have if he had picked the best days to invest. In spite of his bad timing, he still managed to turn his total investment of $200,000 into more than $1 million, growing at an average rate of 15.7% per year. If he picked the best days to invest, he wouldn't have done much better - 17.2% a year.

What Louie learned is that while there are good times and bad times, over the long haul any day is a good day to invest. As a result, he fared much better than if he had waited for the "perfect" time to invest.

This is a copy of advertisement from the American Funds Group . Their examples of Louie the Loser are vivid stories of the value of long term investment strategies.

Below are the year by year results. These results are even more startling when it is realized that this fund charges investors 5.75% of the amount invested and still there is this remarkable return.