Palladium IRA - Is anyone actually timing this, or is it just 'buy and hold' forever?

• •My take has always been that with real assets, you buy for the long haul, especially metals in an IRA where you're thinking decades not months.
• •My Palladium IRA was a substantial chunk of my initial precious metals allocation, and it's been a wild ride, but I just let it do its thing.
• •That said, part of me wonders if I'm being too passive.

Okay, so I've been seeing a lot of chatter lately, both online and with some of my buddies, about "timing the market" when it comes to precious metals, especially palladium given its volatility. I'm sitting here in Chicago, running my construction business, and my portfolio (sitting pretty in the mid-high six figures, mostly tangible assets like my real estate and my Gold/Palladium IRA) has done well over the years by sticking to a pretty straightforward "buy and hold" strategy. My take has always been that with real assets, you buy for the long haul, especially metals in an IRA where you're thinking decades not months. My Palladium IRA was a substantial chunk of my initial precious metals allocation, and it's been a wild ride, but I just let it do its thing.

That said, part of me wonders if I'm being too passive. I bought a significant amount of palladium for my IRA back when things were considerably lower, and watched it surge, then pull back. I remember almost pulling the trigger on adding more when it dipped hard a few years ago, thinking "this is it, grab the discount!" but ultimately stuck to my guns about not actively trading within the IRA, preferring to just let my initial allocation appreciate. My financial advisor is a big proponent of the "time in the market, not timing the market" philosophy, especially for retirement accounts and things like precious metals which aren't generating income.

But for those of you who do dabble in timing things, especially with something like palladium which can swing 10-20% in a month sometimes – are you actually making profitable moves within your IRA? Or is the consensus that for a set-it-and-forget-it, tax-advantaged account, it's just not worth the headache, fees, or potential missteps? I've got a busy company to run, and honestly, spending hours analyzing charts for my palladium holdings doesn't sound like a good use of my time, but I'm open to hearing if people are genuinely seeing success.

I believe in physical assets as a hedge, a store of value, and insurance against inflation and market craziness. That's why I went with the IRA in the first place, putting roughly 10-15% of my total portfolio into it across gold and palladium. My perspective is that if you're trying to trade, you're missing the point of precious metals as a core holding. But for real, am I missing some secret sauce here? Anyone here successfully trading their Palladium IRA, or is everyone else just chilling and holding like me?