If I'm planning to put about 4k into the S&P500, should i put it in as a lump sum or should i DCA this 4k?

It really depends tbh.

1) s&p500 increases 10% upon the start of investment for a year. With little to no corrections.
If you lump sum, all 4k appreciates by 10%. If you DCA, only your first buy in will get 10% and the rest will appreciate less. So your overall gain is less than 10%. So in this case lump sum is btr.

2) multiple corrections throughout the year.
DCA can possibly help u average down significantly during corrections. Possibly might out perform lump sum.

So ultimately one cannot predict the market. So you'll have to see what's your investment horizon. For me, I have a long investment horizon, so I'd just lump sum and hope for the first scenario. If the second scenario happens, since I'm super long term, this 1-5% that I miss by not DCA-ing is honestly peanuts to me. In terms of fees, lump sum is cheaper too!

Just my 2cents worth. You do you.

4k is a relatively small amount, so I would advise you to just lump sum it in. But if you're really worried about the performance of your investment, maybe splitting it in 2 would be easier on the heart.

But just one thing to remember, lump sum generally does perform better than DCA (about 66% of the time), so don't take too long to DCA the other half in. After all, time in the market timing the market.

Whichever way you choose, your result likely won't be far from each other so ultimately the key is to 'just do it'!

Cheers, hope this helped!​​​