Is dollar cost averaging appropriate for long term investing?

Well, i personally don't do dollar cost averaging, because i feel you won't be able to fully utilize the full effects of compounding if you slowly inject in capital to purchase stock, but DCA has it's advantages in the long term as it allows you to average out the cost of the stock, as explained by zann in this post as well. It definitely is a viable long term investment method if you wish to take away the need to time the market and not have to fully commit your full investment capital towards a "buy and hold" strategy.

For me, i truly think that just putting a drip feed system of dripping back dividends into purchasing shares in the mutual fund/ETF/stock is a better way to fully utilize the effects of compounding, since you start with a larger investment capital that will be generating larger amounts of interest for you earlier, but of course, i can be considered lucky as i bought in at a time when the ETF was recovering from a dip, thus i got it relatively "cheap" and undervalued. but, to each his own.

Tldr: DCA spreads this cost over a long period of time and averages it out, which definitely has it's appeals, but i'm not a super big fan of it. a simple buy and hold strategy + drip feed of dividends to buy shares is my go to strategy.

Hello!

Dollar cost averaging is meant for long term investment strategies since it is purchasing shares over a period of time. This would mean that the shares bought would be bought at both the highest and lowest market prices. Thus, overall, the average cost of the share prices being bought at would be an average and would not be bought at when the market is at the highest. By investing a small sum of money each month, the effect of entering the market at the wrong time is significantly reduced. Instead, you will now be paying an average price for the assets that you wish to invest in.