Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input.

To rebalance or not to rebalance
Rebalancing is, simply, a way of making sure your risk/reward level is where you want it to be. Let's say you've decided that your optimal mix is 50% stocks and 50% bonds (or 50% US stocks, 50% international, or 30/30/30 US large-cap/US small-cap/US midcap...).  So you buy $100 of each, but over time, the prices will of course fluctuate.  At the end of the year, the odds that the ratio of the value of your investments is equal to the starting ratio is nil.  So you rebalance to get your target mix again. Rebalance too often and you end up paying a lot in transaction fees.  Rebalance not often enough and you end up running outsize risk. People who tell you that you should rebalance to make money, or use "dollar cost averaging" or think there is any upside to rebalancing outside of risk management are making assumptions about the market (mean regressing or some such thing) that generally you should avoid.