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Are you a market-timer investor, watching trends and moving in and out of the stock market ahead of the crowd (if all goes well), or are you a buy-and-holder, plugging your money into a few key mutual funds and hoping time, and diversification, do the trick?

Read Sam Mamudi’s Weekend Investor story today for a look at how market timing is appealing to more investors in these worrisome and volatile times. Of course, as Mamudi notes, there are gradations between the buy-and-hold and market-timing strategies. You could buy and hold for a significant amount of time, keeping an eye on trends all the while.

And for another point of view on this topic, don’t forget Paul B. Farrell’s column earlier this week on our Lazy Portfolios: eight distinct strategies aimed at those investors who are focused not on the next 10 minutes or even 10 days, but on the next 10 or 20 years. Read Paul Farrell’s Lazy Portfolio column.

No matter what type of investor you are, it’s only getting harder to understand the latest trends. Read Rex Nutting’s First Take column today for a look at July’s 9.5-point drop in the consumer sentiment index. The index has fallen this steeply only six other times, and all of those declines were preceded by major shocking events. As Nutting notes, the latest sentiment reading may simply be a sign that Americans have reached a breaking point after all the bad news in recent months.

And today the market had its worst day in weeks. TGIF.

— Andrea Coombes, Personal Finance editor

Market-timing strategies score big with tense investors

Volatile stock markets have left investor confidence in tatters. Now some say it’s time to accept the turmoil and adopt more dynamic trading strategies.

REAL ESTATE

Question: In your June 4 column, you mentioned that a lot of lenders are denying short sales due to the homeowner showing that he can make his loan payments. Can you explain this a little more?

In a housing market like this, you’d expect a good deal of buyer’s remorse out there. But 90% of homeowners say they don’t regret buying their current home, according to a survey released this week by Bankrate.com.

Deciding to buy a smart phone is the easy part. With dozens of models on the market — add one more after Motorola’s Droid X went on sale Thursday — picking your perfect phone requires hours of research on countless details. But if you prioritize your favorite features, the decision-making process may be less painful.

Apple will tell people Friday what it plans to do about the troubled new iPhone 4. But the craziest thing about the new device isn’t the much-criticized antenna. It’s that most of those who have bought one already had a perfectly good iPhone to begin with.