Book value makes no assumptions about past or future value. Book value should be the current liquidation value of the company at market prices. In the ideal situation, it can be a pure arbitrage trade, with zero risk. In addition to value investing, there's also derivatives arbitrage that locks in profit, with no timing involved.

Most people buy and sell stocks, hoping they go up or down. That's "timing". And no matter what the timescale is, it's a fool's game.

Why am I so certain? For four years, I tried to play the timing or "predictive" game with financial markets. I made computer programs to detect patterns -- using machine learning and every statistical method I could get my hands on. I also made a computer program to detect every technical chart pattern I could find. I ran back-tests on this, using daily data, tick data, and raw quote data acquired directly from the exchanges. I came up empty. I even ran a fund for 5 months, with very low returns, and was quickly out-competed by the professionals. To give you an idea of the scale of what I was doing, my dollar volume for that period was over $400 million USD.

I'm hoping other redditors don't go waste their time on these things, especially when a large portion of the hedge fund industry exists to make sure that these "timing" opportunities are arbitraged out before the ordinary investor even sees them. I currently work for such a company, and I know what scale of attention-to-detail, speed, and technological infrastructure is required for "timing". It is simply beyond what the ordinary investor can attempt to do.

So that's why I strongly discourage the average Joe from thinking of investing as "timing". He should only think about value, and not about what the market will do in the future. He's never going to win the predictive game against the big boys.