Don’t Be Your Own Worst Enemy

Stop getting in your own way!

Stop getting in your own way!

Investing can be a tricky business.  You have to determine why you’re investing and what you’ll be investing in.  Then you have to make investing a habit and do it regularly.  But you also have to watch yourself and make sure you don’t abandon your well thought out plan and change your investments around once the going gets rough.

It has been normal as of late to experience a 2% gain one day followed by a 2.5% loss the next day, and vice versa. Listening to most financial news outlets, you would believe that these are the darkest days the market has seen in a long time.

While it is true that the S&P has seen some dramatic ups and downs as of late, it has not reached the “correction” stage as many financial television stars have been breathlessly predicting the past few months.  Even after the infamous Brexit vote, the stock market actually GAINED ground for the week after a big single day loss after the vote.

For those heavily invested in the stock market, watching these wild swings can be dizzying. But the market goes up, and the markets go down. That’s what it has always done and that’s what it will always do. The important thing for investors to remember is to stay with the plan through thick and thin.

Stick to the Plan

If you and your financial advisor have already formulated a long term investing plan, you can be sure that volatility, or the ups and down of investing, has been taken into account. While timing the market is usually an exercise in futility, the market has historically been pretty predictable as a whole.

Taking a long term view, let’s say 30 years or more, the market has always gone up in any such period. After bear markets and periods of volatility, the market has rebounded to new heights. This was most likely taken into account when forming your financial plan, so there is no need to abandon the plan if a little volatility rears its head.

In fact, doing so would be foolish and harmful to your wealth. To make money with any investment, you need to buy low and sell high. By abandoning stocks in your 401k when there is a downturn, you are essentially buying high and selling low, exactly the opposite of what you should be doing.

Manage your Behavior

Staying the course sounds great in theory, but it can get old after a while and start to wear you down. Listening to the doom and gloom of the mainstream media and talking to people who are making big market moves can make it tempting to pull the trigger.

Pushing that panic button could torpedo your entire financial plan. Sitting on the sidelines during dramatic market swings can actually wear an investor out, and the idea of keeping your money “safe and sound” in a money market account sounds really enticing.

But, again, it’s important to remind yourself that markets go up and down. That is simply the nature of the beast. Find a way to tune out the noise to avoid any volatility fatigue. This could mean not watching any financial media for a few days, getting a pep talk from your advisor or reading a common sense investing book. You can be your own worst enemy when it comes to making investment decisions.

Conclusion

Sometimes, the best course of action in times of turmoil is to do nothing. Let others head for the hills and abandon their stocks, which will invariably happen as we see a rush of investors dumping equities and heading to bonds.

Sticking to your plan will allow you to pick up stocks at a bargain and be poised to gain tremendously when the next market upswing occurs. So while others will be scrambling to get in on the gains, you will already be locked in. Think about that when the idea of staying the course starts to wear on you.

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Comments

  1. Emotions can really derail your plan. I remember during the fall of the market in 2008 how many people exited out of stocks. It takes guts to stick to what you know will work over the long run, especially when everyone else seems to do the opposite.

    • Syed says

      It really does take guts. I actually started investing in the market in 2009, so all I’ve known is it increases. But I’ve done enough reading that I know it’s going to go down, and even pretty far down at some points. I’m in it until the end…hopefully!

  2. Doug says

    We have to have a long term plan. That over valued stock you have today could be way undervalued in 2-3 or 5 or 10 as you look around you see a lot of selling these. I’m buy and hold unless the dynamics of a company change and it looks like it could go Enron or worldcom

    • Syed says

      I firmly believe many people buy stocks just on the basis of popularity. I mean, how cool does it sound when you tell someone you own some Apple or Tesla stock? But you’re right they could be terribly overvalued, and stock picking should be about research and sticking with reputable and productive companies.

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