The Rational Reminder Podcast · Thursday, July 16, 2026
Benjamin Felix explains that research consistently shows lump sum investing to be statistically superior to dollar-cost averaging (DCA). In a study of six stock markets over 10-year periods, lump sum investing beat DCA about 65% of the time, with an average annualized cost of DCA around 38 basis points.
“We know from our research and the research of other people that lump sum investing is statistically superior to dollar cost averaging over time.”
“So in that analysis, we looked at six different stock markets, we looked at 10 year periods and asked whether dollar cost averaging over the first 12 months of the 10 year period beat investing everything at the beginning of the first month.”
“And what we found in that analysis is that lump sum investing beat dollar cost averaging around 65% of the time on average across all of our countries.”
“And the approximate annualized cost of dollar cost averaging was about 38 basis points over 10 years.”