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The futility of trying to time the markets has never been more apparent than it was in October.

Just as the market decline early in the month got interesting, stocks stabilized and began to march higher again. Investors sitting on piles of cash had just days to buy stocks at their best bargain prices in a while. Ready to give up on market-timing and put your cash to work? Try these four suggestions on how to put your cash to work.

The triple-threat ETF strategy
Pick low-cost, broadly diversified equity exchange-traded funds for the Canadian, U.S. and international markets and divide your money evenly into each. Invest immediately on the understanding that you will not revisit the results in a week or month. Five years is the right timeframe for judging the success of investments like these. Ten years is better.

Pick a quality balanced fund
Balanced funds are a blend of stocks and bonds, so you've got at least some degree of protection if you buy just ahead of another stock market plunge. As stocks fall, money generally flows into bonds. Globeinvestor.com's Fund Filter can help you avoid the many over-priced and mediocre balanced funds available. Focus on balanced funds that tilt toward stocks as opposed to bonds.

Try a robo-adviser
These online advice firms design ETF portfolios for clients and charge a small fee for ongoing monitoring and rebalancing. Not as cheap as investing for yourself, but less costly than using an adviser. If you're ready to concede that you'll never get your cash invested on your own, robo-advisers are worth a look. Check out this column I wrote on them for more details.

Buy some of your bank's Canadian dividend mutual fund
Some banks are better at this type of investment than others, but on the whole these funds are an acceptable way to get exposure to blue chip Canadian dividend stocks at a reasonable cost. Dividend stocks will get hammered along with everything else in a sharp market downturn, but they have a proven ability to generate solid long-term total returns based on share price gains and cash dividend payments.

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