An Active Strategy Alternative

I have been thinking that since gold and stocks are at all-time highs right now, it might make sense to wait in out in low volatility SHY (short-term bond ETF), until a correction in the stock market happens. I know that this is like trying to time the market. But in reality, I'm only going to try to time the market once. The stock market is very high right now and is overdue for a pullback of 10% or more.

There is actually a name for this strategy, it is called the 10% Pullback Strategy. But instead of looking at doing this for a single stock, I'm going to implement this strategy on the whole market. In a way that was my original idea for my Term Deposit. If it had matured in April or May, I would have closed it and brought the market, as the stock market was 10% lower after Trumps 'liberation day' tariffs. But since it matured in June, I reinvested it, as the markets had already seemingly recovered. But I have been kicking myself for the last few months that I didn't put it into the market, as it has risen 10% in the time that the Term Deposit has earned 2%. If you waited for a 10% drop though, there is no telling if the market will drop another 20% or 40% (like it did it 2008). It is of course feasible that you buy the market in increments as it drops a.k.a dollar-cost-averaging.

It is a very hard thing to time the markets though, as I have learned. I have already got a version of the SHY/IEF/IEI (bond fund) with my Term Deposit. Just because I am able to get out of the SHY much easier than the Term Deposit, doesn't mean that I'm going to be able to 'time' the market. And who knows if the market will decline in the next couple of months (before my deposit matures). I have thought about a couple of different passive portfolio allocations that have a volatility around half that of the equity market. This money would only be between 5 to 10% of my portfolio, and it would actually be nice to not have to worry about my Interactive Brokers account. If I am able to set up a passive portfolio that will do well in any market, that would be ideal.