I think the idea is that the behavior of the subjects of the article will almost never lead to ten years of accumulating wealth. It will more than likely lead to losses after a term of one to three years.

But the behaviour of investing in VTSAX would also have left them with losses after one year. It was higher this time last year.

The people in the article are down, and I'd personally rather be up than down...

VTSAX is down for the year too. So you'd still be down.

Not over the past 10 years...

Right, so the real sin was not being in the market 10 years ago, at the start of the greatest bull run in history. Not groundbreaking.

Didn't say it was groundbreaking, just said it's better to be slow and steady than focus on one year's worth of gains/losses. Short term wins is how gamblers think, long term gains is how investors think.

Which one are you?