I’m probably not going to make many friends with a title like this.

But actually, I’m not totally against DCA.

In fact, I was doing DCA when I bought my first stocks and ETFs.

And to be honest, I still think DCA makes sense in some cases.

But today, for a lot of people, “investing” basically means doing DCA forever on a few popular assets.

And I think that’s totally stupid.

That’s the kind of DCA I’ll be talking about in this post.

What is DCA?

The idea behind Dollar-Cost Averaging is simple:

• You want to buy an asset.
• But you don’t want to care about when it’s the best time to buy.
• So you just buy it regularly, without looking at the price.
• Sometimes you’ll buy the highs, sometimes the lows — and over time, your average cost per unit should roughly match the market average.

It’s a brainless, no-effort method that’s supposed to be better than trying to “predict the market.”

And, well, you can’t predict the market.

Unless you’re Donald Trump buying some Bitcoin before tweeting something nice about crypto.

But between not using your brain and being a prophet (or president), there’s a middle ground.

Because while you can’t predict the market, you can:

1. Get a sense of the current situation, and
2. Decide what to do in the different scenarios that are likely to occur.

The DCA Mindset is Fucked Up

People who do DCA think everything always goes up in the long term.

That’s why they keep accumulating, and why they’re always happy to buy.

• When the asset price is rising, they’re happy to buy because their portfolio line is going up.
• When the asset price is falling, they’re happy to buy because it’s “cheap,” so it feels like a great opportunity.

And to me, this is where the danger starts.

The DCA method removes your sense of responsibility toward your positions.

You just follow a dumb routine: when the bell rings, you click “buy” without thinking.

You do it because everyone shows you charts that always go up in the long term — to justify DCA.

But here’s the thing:

• Some charts never go up again.
• And when you zoom in, you’ll see long corrections that last for years — the kind that are hard to live through. (you’ll get my point later.)

DCA is often tied to another bias people have: “the fundamentals are good” or “it’s a famous asset.”

I’m French.

In France, LVMH is one of our last national jewels.

It was actually the first stock I ever bought, and I was doing DCA on it… until I stopped and sold it.

That turned out to be a very good decision.

Let’s Take a Look at LVMH

The chart above shows daily candles with three EMAs, from early 2023 to November 2025:

• 200-day EMA in orange
• 50-day EMA in yellow
• 20-day EMA in purple

In spring 2023, after a solid uptrend, the stock was trading around €900.

When it started to drop, people were happy to “buy the dip,” thinking it would bounce back to new highs.

But it never reached the ATH again.

That was a bad signal, and the stock fell to €440. That’s a 50% drop in two and a half years.

Now, that’s not necessarily catastrophic.

If you look at LVMH’s long-term chart since 2000, you’ll see plenty of big corrections like this one. But I have no idea what the future holds for LVMH, and that’s not the purpose of this post to make some predictions.

Just Imagine: You did DCA from €900 to €440

At first, it probably felt satisfying, buying the stock cheaper each time.

Then it started to go up again, and there was hope for a new ATH, maybe a resumed uptrend.

But month after month, you kept adding to your position (because that’s what DCA tells you to do) while the price kept falling.

You watched your position grow bigger, and your losses grow even faster.

For two and a half years straight.

How do you sleep at night? 😅

Another great example that fits right next to LVMH in a “good father’s” French portfolio is Pernod Ricard.

Over the same period, it lost about 60% of its value.

What About the MSCI World?

If you’re doing DCA, there’s a good chance you’re doing it on the MSCI World.

Not choosing when you buy, not even what you buy. Just letting destiny decide for you.

“Becoming rich with minimal effort”.

Let’s look at the MSCI World chart.

Let’s say you started your DCA right before the internet bubble burst in 2000.

It took 14 years for the index to climb back to its 2000 high.

Depending on your DCA frequency, and considering that it takes less time to crash than to recover from it, you’d probably have broken even after 10 years of DCA.

Zero percent return in ten years. Great job.

Don’t Hope. Face Reality. Take Control.

What I want to say in this post is: with a bit of common sense and some basic technical analysis, you can avoid getting stuck in this kind of situation.

Which means:

• You take profits before things start going bad

  → otherwise you’ll probably lose them

• You can use that money elsewhere while the stock or index is falling, and make gains on other assets.

• You can come back later, when the chart gives good signals, with more capital, and end up with a lower PRU than if you had just DCA’d blindly.

It’s not “hardcore trading.”

It’s just about paying attention to the long-term trend.

If you look back at LVMH’s chart and its EMAs, sure, there are some uncertain periods, but it’s still pretty clear when it’s just going down.

You can pray, or you can be in control.

Let’s Apply Both Methods on LVMH

Method 1: DCA

Say you started DCA’ing from the top — around €900, every month.

That means you bought at €800, €750, €700, €650, and so on… maybe even below €500.

The result? You’ve built a huge losing position that kept growing for more than two years.

Because you bought regularly all the way down, even with the nice uptrend we’re seeing at the end of 2025, you’re still probably deep in the red.

You’ll maybe need LVMH to go all the way back up just to break even — which could take another one or two years. Maybe more, depending on what happening in the world, which could worsen your position.

That means no profits for years. And a very bad position in the portfolio.

That’s pretty sad.

Method 2: Sell and Wait for a Reversal

Of course, you wouldn’t have sold your entire position right at €900.

But let’s say you were paying attention to long-term EMAs and used them to spot trend changes.

You could have sold around €780–800. If you started DCA’ing months before, you would have made some profits here.

Then you might have noticed the trend changes at the start of 2024 and 2025, and tried to do some profit here.

And now, by late 2025, you might try again.

That means:

• You made real profits before the crash.
• You used those profits and initial capital to invest in other opportunities while LVMH was going down.
• You come back to LVMH at a better time, with more capital and a lower average cost.

Instead of suffering through the market, not knowing when/if you’ll get your money back, you’re in control.

Learnings

It might sound ridiculous, but for a long time, I was afraid to go out of my positions, and afraid to go in.

If you sell with gains, yes, you might pay some taxes. But at least you’ve secured those gains. And if it turns out you were wrong to sell, you can always buy back in.

If you buy and the trade doesn’t go your way, you can sell and step out.

Simple as that.

Once I understood this, I realized I could stay in control.

Brainless DCA is stupid.

But DCA can be a good strategy when you’re accumulating an asset that’s in a long-term uptrend.

I just don’t buy in downtrends anymore. It’s the best way to lock and/or lose money.