Thank you sir for taking your time to educate me on this matter. You know I have only limited myself to the practice of the dca method. I haven't had the privilege to apply the theory three practice. Hopefully in the future when I get lump sum, I'll divide it into three parts and practicalise the three practice so I will be informed and gather knowledge. For now since I only depend on my monthly income, I will continue with my differ technique (DCA) since I like buying weekly.
DCA is not a deferring technique if you are buying whenever you get paid (such as weekly or whenever you figure out how much money you have remaining after figuring out your expenses). However, if you receive a lump sum payment, like in my earlier example, then all of a sudden you might have 12 weeks or more of your regular DCA amount sitting in front of you. In that case, if you were to spread out some of your lump sum over time, then you would be deferring your buy, and there is nothing wrong with that.
So the kind of DCA that a guy does when buys bitcoin every time he gets paid, such as once a week, is not deferred.
however the kind of DCA that a guy does if he receives a lump sum, and maybe he decides to spread it out for 4 weeks or more, then that would be deferred,.
Let's go back to the example that I created. Usually you plan to buy $100 every single week, except some weeks you either don't get paid enough or your expenses are higher, so you might ONLY have $60 to buy bitcoin in those weeks, and then there are some other weeks that your pay is very high or your expenses are very low, so you are able to buy up to $170 worth of bitcoin.
So after you had been engaging in that kind of system for several months, maybe 6 months, all of a sudden you go to work and you hear that on the next Tuesday you are going to receive an extra $1,500 because the boss is feeling generous or there was some kind of a profit sharing arrangement that had caused you to earn it... so yeah, you are very excited, yet you figured you had been being a bit skimpy on building your back up funds, so you decided to add $300 of that to put into your back up funds and then use the other $1,200 to buy bitcoin.. and since you want to test out each one of the systems with your bonus pay, you figure that within a day of your receiving the deposit, you are going to buy $400 right away (within that same week), and then you with the buying on dip portion, you are going to set up to buy $100 ever time the bitcoin price drops 4%, starting from 4% lower than whatever price that you end up making your first buy with the $400. So then you figure that you would buy at 4%, 8%, 12% and 16%. If the BTC price goes up rather than down, you will rethink the matter if the BTC price goes up 16% from whatever price you buy the $400 next week... otherwise you are just going to keep those buy orders set. Regarding the DCA, you decide that you are going to add $50 to each of your already scheduled weekly DCA buys no matter whatever the DCA amount that you buy for the week, you are going to add $50 for each of the next 8 weeks.
Something like this could happen at any time. Let's say that you receive a gift or you are given a side job that is going to pay you some extra amount that is beyond what you usually make.
I understand the difference you are pointing out between a steady weekly DCA out of income and a purchase deferral strategy when working with a lump sum. Personally, I can be more associated with the former situation as the buys are solely based on the salary when the bills are paid, and thus there is no actual waiting, but simply it is my routine. However, your example of the bonus indicates how the strategy can be flexible. Supply of part to immediate buy, part to dips, and increasing weekly DCA could be clever manipulation to experiment with providing a variety of approaches without compromising the discipline. It provides me with a better idea on how to adjust when I will finally encounter a lump sum in future.