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IS it the wrong time to get into the equity market immediately after large gains?
Past results are not a predictor of future results. There is no explicit upper bound on a market, and even if individual companies' values were remaining unchanged one would expect the market to drift upward in the long term. Plus, there's been some  shift from managing companies for dividends to managing stocks for growth, which will tend to increase the upward push. Trying to time the market -- to guess when it's going to move in any particular direction -- is usually closer to gambling than investing. The simplest answer remains a combination of buy-and-hold and dollar-cost averaging. Buy at a constant number of dollars per month (or whatever frequency you prefer), and you will automatically buy more when the stock/fund is lower, less when it is higher. That takes advantage of downturns as buying opportunities without missing out on possible gains at the other end. Personally, I add a bit of contrarian buying to that -- I increased my buying another notch or two while the market was depressed, since I had money I wouldn't need any time soon (buy and hold) and I was reasonably confident that enough of the market would come back strongly enough that I wasn't at significant risk of losing the investment. That's one of the things which causes me to be categorized as an "aggressive investor" even though I'm operating with a very vanilla mix of mutual funds and not attempting to micromanage my money. My goal is to have the money work for me, not vice versa.