Not everyone has this best friend. A lot of people don't have enough time to mitigate the short-term risk of the stock market. I'm not saying that short time horizon is the reason for not investing, but investment/money management strategies are vastly different for long-term vs short-term investments. It looks like you are advocating for long-term investment, which is no doubt a very reasonable thing to do. Hope it helps some readers to start investing sooner rather than later when they do have the best friend that never fails to help in the investment business.