This post is not meant to solicit new clients. My firm is closed to new clients. It is meant to make you think about your retirement and your financial health. I hope it helps.
You don't need analysts in a bull market and you don't want them in a bear
market. It is time to revisit some common sense for all of you in the fly-over
states who will have brokers calling with the sell-this, buy-that meme as their
commission runs dry up in this bear market.
Having been through a fair amount of volatility in my trading career I can only
say for certain there is some massive spikes of volatility ahead. I started in
this business on April 1, 1982, what a joke eh?
There is going to be a lot of pain with your money. It is coming just as sure
as the lies and campaign promises of Republicans and Democrats.
Let me share some advice in a speech that I gave long ago and not too long ago.
It never seems to go out of style.
I was born in 1953. That year the price of a 1st class postage stamp was 3
cents. Maybe I am old-fashioned, maybe I have been around too long, maybe I‘ve
made too much money sitting in stocks over many years. You see, I’m one of
those guys what believes stocks solve long-term problems. You should too. If
you are like many investors maybe you turned off TV and stopped watching financial
news as the market corrected back in 2000, 2001 and 2002 from the excesses of
the 1990’s. I know the drivel on CNBC from the buy-this, sell-that crowd drowns
out basic, common sense. To me, and probably to you, the hallmarks of a
successful retirement are dignity and independence, the ability to go hunting
where and when you want and the ability to meet the basic needs of life that
continue to only go one way in price. Up.
Today, the average American male lives to be 78, the average female lives to 81.
I know the key to financial independence, perhaps over decades of retirement is
an income you can’t outlive, an income that is rising even as your cost of
living continues to go up.
Personally, I think the biggest financial risk to all of us besides losing
one’s money, is outliving it, which means owning the stock market is more
critical today than ever before. Remember the cost of living has tripled over
the last 30 years, yet few triple their income in retirement? Risk is the
extinction of purchasing power. Safety is increasing your purchasing power.
Last week I paid 49 cents for a postage stamp. I will bet my Lowa boots the
price of stamps is only going one way. Care to guess which way the price of
stamps will go?
The stock market is simply a facility for the exchange of shares. Just like the
markets for fur, guns, traps or fish it is driven by supply and demand. My
friends on the NYSE floor understand fear and greed better than most but they
can’t tell the difference between preferred stock and livestock, they only care
about payouts on commissions generated with your money, not theirs. When I last
checked fear and greed hadn’t changed for around 10,000 years. Today,
capitalism is the organizing principle for most of the human activity on the
globe, for no one can stop capitalism. Here are 10 reasons why the United
States stock market is going to continue up much like it has during your entire
lifetime, (1) the U.S. has the greatest number of entrepreneurial managed
companies in the world, bar none. (2) we have the leading military in the world
(3) we have the leading high technology in the world in both hardware and
software (4) we have the leading medical technology in the world (5)we have the
leading political system in the world (6) we have 25 times more Nobel prize
winners than any other country in the world (7) we create more jobs than Japan
and Europe combined (8) we have 11,000 companies that trade publicly under some
of the better accounting rules anywhere (9) you as an American have the freedom
to accumulate wealth and extract out of life what it is you want and (10) the
stock market doesn’t care who you are, what color you are, where you went to
school, and, (because I grew up in the poorest county in America on the Pine
Ridge Indian Reservation), it doesn’t care where you came from.
Things are great and they are going to get better. I feel the 21st Century
started in 1989 when the Berlin Wall came down. Change is certain. I am one of
those guys that believe you set your goals in life ahead of time. Mine includes
being a free person; freedom is what this country is all about. The
opportunities for success are greater now than ever before. For the first time
in the history of the world, all the people who are poor know they are poor.
Success has nothing to do with money and everything to do with how you feel
about yourself. Your net worth is your ability to function. When I was a cadet
at the United States Military Academy at West Point postage stamps cost 8 cents
and the Dow crossed 1,000 for the first time. That same year the microprocessor
was invented. Today, 85% of the scientists who have ever lived are still
working! When I took my degree in Economics the price of a stamp was 13 cents.
Still think you don’t need exposure to the stock market?
The market is a funny place. It is the only business in the world when things
are on sale, people don’t want to buy. The greatest enemy of long-term
investment success is not ignorance, it is fear. You see, fear leads to panic
and panic breeds the inability to distinguish between temporary declines and
permanent losses. When people panic they don’t discriminate. Since all market
declines have been temporary and all advances permanent, we know the key to
investment success is not found in intellectual babble like beta’s, standard
deviations or chaos theory. It’s time in the market. Put time on your side. The
single greatest thing you have going for you is time because no one can
successfully forecast interest rates over the long term and no one can forecast
short to intermediate-term stock market moves. Long term the market always goes
up, which is inevitable. But, why do investors lose in the market and why has
the average mutual fund investor only averaged a small return in his mutual
fund holdings?
I don’t mean to be critical, but most people invest through the rear-view
mirror. They buy mutual funds after they have gone up substantially. They have
bought into what I call the Sesame Street School of investing. They buy into
the hottest fund, in the hottest sector, in the hottest country, from the
hottest brokerage firm, and the one that has the most “stars” next to it in
Money magazine. Then what happens? You know the drill. They turn cold. In
fairly short order, a perfectly normal market correction comes along. The cycle
comes to an end. Investing like that is like enlisting in the Taliban on
September 12th, 2001. Yes, you are joining the proudest fighting force in the
world that day. Yes, your outfit just pulled off one of the greatest disasters
of all time. But you know what? You are toast. Your obituary is written. It is
all downhill. I have no wish to drive this message into the ground like a ICBM
but I want to make one point very clear. Pay attention. At the end of an
investor’s life, less than 5% of his total lifetime return will from what his
investments did versus other investments. The other 95% will come from how the
investor behaved.
You see, I have a firm belief that there is absolutely no relationship between
investment performance and investor performance. Stock market success is a
function of two things. One, recognition that the markets will go down and
sometimes go down a lot, and two, prepare to regard those declines as either
non-events or buying opportunities and never as an occasion to sell. With all
certainty, I know that the most boring and mediocre stock fund in your
portfolio, the one you hold onto during a vicious bear market is infinitely
better than the world-class stock fund that you sell out of at the bottom of a
temporary decline.
The secret to making big money in stocks is to not get scared out of them. Americans, God bless them, are totally unable to distinguish between fluctuation and loss. The bottom line is this, and if you don’t believe me you have the right to be wrong, but don’t forget it, the higher your exposure to stocks as a percentage of your assets the better your overall return, over the long term.
In the long run, no one controls our
investment fate. We control it. Bailing out of markets is like quitting a
marathon because you get tired!
No comments:
Post a Comment