Stock: Buy for the long term!

So I bought Google at 704 earlier this month. It went up to 745, and then subsequently crashed to 655. Unsure about the future of the market, I ended up selling at that price.

After that it went down to 625 or so before recovering almost to 700. I have feelings of regrets of not holding it on longer.

But the lesson learned is that money invested into the stock market should be money that you do not expect to see back immediately. My Achilles heel was that the money I used to invest was the balance transfer from my CC used to carry me over while I invested in my employee stock purchase plan. Since that money is something I can't afford to lose much of, I panicked, whereas if it was truly my own money, it would have been easier to work through the ups and downs.

So for now, I will not invest in the stock market. I'll hold off for a year as I build a cash reserve, and then jump in. Until then, I'll have my ESPP, which I'll probably flip for at least the first year.