Investing
Strategically
— Not
Emotionally
By Daniel T. Newquist,
CFP®, AIF®
Daniel T. Newquist,
CFP®, AIF® is a Principal
Wealth Advisor with RNP
Advisory Services, Inc., in
Morgan Hill with over 20
years’ experience advising
clients on their personal
wealth and business planning
needs. Investment advisory
services offered through
RNP Advisory Services, Inc.
Securities offered through
Securities America, Inc.,
member FINRA/SIPC, a
separate entity. The Investment
Fiduciary standard of care
applies to advisory
services only.
W
hile many of us understand that our emotions can compromise our long-term
fi nancial goals, it isn’t always easy to ignore media hype. But letting emotions guide
our investment decisions can have a real impact on our portfolios.
Sometimes what seems like a reasonable investment strategy is actually emotion in
disguise. We believe these emotional strategies can be particularly harmful, because at first
glance they may seem like good, even rational, ideas.
EMOTIONAL STRATEGY:
Waiting for the “right time” to invest. Timing the market is almost impossible to do success-
fully, even for most professional money managers. Many investors after the Great Recession sat
on the sidelines as U.S. markets went up and up, almost tripling in less than a decade.
In 2016 and 2017, some financial experts predicted an imminent stock market decline.
If you had invested according to their predictions and taken money out of your portfolio (or
stopped investing), you would have missed out on a 12% total return in 2016 and a 22%
total return in 2017 in the S&P 500. Eventually, a bear market will happen, but it is almost
certainly riskier trying to predict it and avoid it than to ride it out.
Smarter strategy: Ignore the pundits (and your own emotional impulses) and invest for
the long term.
EMOTIONAL STRATEGY:
Buying the stocks of popular, innovative companies that are generating buzz amongst your
friends. While it is fun to feel like you are part of a cool club and are investing in the future,
innovative companies are not always the most successful investments. Take Google and
Domino’s, which both went public in 2004. Google, which continues to make incredible
inventions and technological advances, returned 1985% through the end of 2017. Meanwhile,
Domino’s, which makes pizza and breadsticks, returned 2720%. 2
Whenever you invest in a limited number of companies, you become susceptible to what is
called idiosyncratic risk, or risk that applies only to one type of asset. For example, a company’s
miracle drug could turn out to be a bust, or the CEO of another company might make
embarrassing public pronouncements … and suddenly you could be faced with major losses.
Smarter strategy: Own a broadly diversifi ed portfolio, so that troubles with one company, or
sector, or country, have less impact on your overall portfolio.
EMOTIONAL STRATEGY:
Investing in products or managers that purport to have some special “edge.” This is almost the
entire premise of the hedge fund industry, which claims that its proprietary algorithms and
cutting-edge research make it well-positioned to deliver outstanding performance. Over the
past decade or so, the reality has been much less impressive, with hedge funds, as a whole,
signifi cantly underperforming the S&P 500.
Because hedge funds are not subject to the same investor protection regulations as other
types of investments, they may provide less transparency about their strategies.
Smarter strategy: Invest in products, such as mutual funds, that are highly regulated … and
avoid any product or manager claiming a “secret sauce” or applying untested methodologies
(or tested methodologies that don’t generally work that well).
Your financial advisor can help steer you away from fads and emotional decisions and
toward rational strategies that are based on decades of academic research and insight. As the
money manager Jim Rogers noted, “People are too quick to accept conventional wisdom,
because it sounds basically true and it tends to be reinforced by both their peers and opinion
leaders, many of whom have never looked at whether the facts support the received wisdom.
As with many things in life, often what ‘everybody knows’ turns out to be wrong.”
–––––––––––––––––––––––––
[email protected]
or call 408. 779.0699.
2Source: Yahoo Finance as of 1/31/2018.
Securities listed are for illustrative purposes only and are not to be viewed as investment recommendations. They are not
representative of any specific portfolio, and it should not be assumed that investments in any of the securities listed were or
will prove to be profitable.
GILROY • MORGAN HILL • SAN MARTIN
february/march 2019
gmhtoday.com
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