“There’s only been a few times that a month has begun with three strong days such as we saw last week," Cashin told CNBC.

"But unfortunately, most of the times, two days later, the market was headed back down.”

Cashin said although the buy-and-hold strategy is dead, markets go through 17.6-year alternating cycles where investors can either “throw darts at the wall and everything goes up” during the "fat" years — or wait until the market bottoms out during a "lean" cycle, like the current one.

“We’ve got about 7 more years to go [on the lean cycle],” Cashin said. Unlike during the fat cycle, investors and traders have to be hyper-vigilant and "be there every day" to react nimbly to market moves.

Scorecard—What He Said:

Cashin's Previous Appearance on CNBC (Sept. 3, 2010)

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Disclosures:

No immediate information was available for Cashin or his firm.

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