Tag Archives: investing

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Should I Take My Investment Gains Off The Table?

A friend called me the other day to ask a question that I know many share and that many financial advisors are hearing, especially from those who are currently in retirement. Here’s how the conversation went, along with a few notes specifically for financial advisors to help in the similar conversations you’re having with your clients:

Q: “Tim, my portfolio has done well enough in just the first quarter of the year that we’ve more than covered the income we need from our investments for the whole year. Should we just cash out and take our investment gains off the table?”

A: First, I understand how you feel. We’ve had so many years where gains were hard to come by and a few in which it felt like the bottom was going to fall out. It’s stressful, even in the best of times, so the temptation to take your winnings off of the table in a year where your income goals have already been met feels not only rational, but right.

And yes, you certainly could do exactly that.

Financial advisor note: Our clients are the hero of their story, we are only a guide. They are the boss, and we are the hired help. So in any circumstance, the client must feel free to exercise whatever instinct occurs, because they are literally in control. Furthermore,  we take an important step in any form of coaching by reminding the coachee of their autonomy. A client might be inclined to expect their advisor to put up a fight when they suggest they’re considering cashing out of their portfolio—and they’re probably right to anticipate as much—but recognizing the very freedom they already possess often frees them to make the decision we’d prefer.

taking chips off the table
Taking Chips Off The TableYURI SMITYUK/TASS
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The Only Market Volatility Prediction You Can Count On

“As you can see, we’re experiencing rough air at the moment. But as a reminder, we can’t predict rough air,” said the Delta airline pilot ferrying me from St. Louis to Charleston (via Atlanta—always Atlanta), “so please keep your seatbelts on whenever you are seated.”

Thank you, sir, for giving me precisely the hint of inspiration I needed to frame this week’s note of encouragement while in the midst of one of the crazier market stretches we’ve seen in a couple of decades!

DANIEL ROLAND/AFP/Getty Images

Of course, statistically speaking, this bout of stock market extremism is more the norm than the exception.  No, it’s not particularly normal to have thousand-point-up or -down days for the Dow Jones Industrial Index.  But volatility—market ups and downs—is, indeed, more typical than placid markets.

One of the very few market predictions I (or anybody, for that matter) can responsibly make:

The market is more likely to be volatile than not.

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TODAY Show Appearance: Talking Debt, Budgeting, Market Highs And Maintaining Motivation

What better way to start off the New Year than in New York with the TODAY Show?  Despite the 18 below windchill whipping through the city streets, I had a blast with Sheinelle Jones and Craig Melvin discussing the most damaging forms of debt, the top two budgeting apps, the best kinds of checking accounts, how you should respond to market highs–and lows–and how best to stay motivated to turn those financial resolutions into long-term habits!

Click HERE or on the box above to watch the segment.

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The Antidote for Stock Market Hysteria

Just for fun, Google the words “market pullback.” There are more than 11 million results–many of them market predictions that are worth even less of your time than it took to Google “market pullback.” 

However, despite their worthlessness, market predictions remain as predictable as market opens and closes. (And I predict no end in sight.)

But why?

First, there’s a clear profit motive. Apparent urgency leads to activity, and activity is still how most of the financial services industry makes its money.  

“Bullish predictions encourage investors to pour fresh money into the markets, helping asset management companies to enjoy rising profits,” the New York Times reported, noting that the Wall Street forecaster’s consensus since 2000 has averaged a 9.5% increase each year. They accidentally got it (almost) right in 2016, but in 2008, the consensus prognostication missed the mark by 49 percentage points (an outcome that makes your local weatherman seem like a harbinger of accuracy)!  

Of course, not everyone’s positive either. My colleague and the co-author of the new book “Your Complete Guide To Factor-Based Investing,” Larry Swedroe, analyzed Marc Faber’s perpetually cataclysmic proclamations and rendered the good doctor “without a clue.”  

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What 2016 Taught Us About Investing

Originally in ForbesInvesting is a pursuit best liberated from short-term analysis that tends to mislead more than edify. But 2016 was one of those rare years that provided a lifetime’s worth of education in a brief period.

Here are the three big investing lessons of 2016 that can be applied to good effect over the long term:

1) Discipline works.

January was greeted with panic-inspiring headlines like, “Worst Opening Week in History.” While hyperbolic, the truth in headlines such as these may have been more than enough to scare off investors frustrated by seemingly unrewarded discipline in recent years.

With threats of international instability (Brexit) and domestic volatility (historically wacky election cycle), there were ready reasons to cash in even the most well-conceived investment plan, opting for observer status over participant. But to do so would’ve been a huge mistake.

Indeed, the S&P 500 logged an impressive 11.9% for the year, with small- and value-oriented indices pointing even higher.

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How Fantasy Ruins Football (and Investing)

Originally in ForbesIt’s that time of year again, where the heat of summer recedes, sweatshirts make a comeback and businesses lose billions in flagging productivity due to fantasy football. But it’s not just businesses losing out—fans and players come up short as well.

How, after all, can I truly dedicate myself to rooting fully for my beloved Baltimore Ravens if I took JuJu Smith-Schuster—who, for those not acquainted with the best rivalry in football, plays wide receiver for the Steelers? It can’t be done. It’s just wrong.

I’m kidding, right?

Partly. But there are more serious personal and financial implications to embracing fantasy (sports or otherwise). The danger in fantasy is its distance from reality. It’s “betting on a future that is not likely to happen,” according to Psychology Today.

Our fantasies tend to sensationalize what we’d prefer to imagine while ignoring what we’d prefer to not. Then, when our actual spouse, child, parent, friend, or co-worker falls short of the impossibly high bar we’ve set for them, we—and often, they—are crushed.

“Emotional suffering is created in the moment we don’t accept what is,” says Eckhart Tolle, who, perhaps unintentionally, delivers a potent dose of truth that especially informs us in our personal dealings with money.

Here are a handful of financial fantasies, followed by their unvarnished truths:

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Thank God Life (and Investing) Isn’t Like the Olympics

Originally in ForbesImagine that your entire life revolves around a single performance lasting less than 14 seconds. You’ve sacrificed your youth, close friendships and any semblance of a career in pursuit of validating your Herculean effort on the world’s largest stage. The hopes of your country on your shoulders. Tens of millions of gawkers eager to praise perfection — and condemn anything less.

And then.

You dork it.

Jeffrey Julmis

That’s precisely what happened to Haitian hurdler Jeffrey Julmis in the Olympic 110-meter semifinal heat when he crashed into the very first hurdle, tumbling violently into the second.

Wow. I love the Olympics, the pinnacle of athletic competition. I even see past all the corporate corruption and commercial sensationalism, drinking in every vignette, simply in awe of all that the human body, mind and spirit can accomplish in peak performance. But thank God life isn’t like the Olympics (even for Olympians).

We aren’t subject to the imperial thumbs up or down based on a single momentary contest (or even a handful of them). But we’re certainly capable of treating life that way, often to our detriment. Don’t believe me? When was the last time you said (or thought):

“This is the most important thing I’ve ever done.”

“It’s all leading up to this.”

We’re trained to think this way because that narrative is more likely to keep you from switching the channel, more likely to motivate you to buy that car (or house or hair product), all of it promising to be that singular moment or lead you to it.

This script is especially common in the world of financial products. If you surveyed the marketing collateral for a host of investment products, you’d think the product being sold was a sailboat, new golf clubs, a winery or beach house — a life without care. But success in investing is actually achieved through the tedium of saving and the application of a simple, long-term investment plan — not the sexy new investment product or strategy that pledges to deliver your hopes and dreams.

Thankfully, this is also true in life (and athletics). “Success” is cultivated in the millions of unseen moments, the application of simple disciplines employed in pursuit of goals that don’t expire the minute we’re out of the spotlight. And even at the moment of our most abominable failures, the humbled Haitian hurdler provided us with the only example we need:

He got up and finished the race.

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The Relative Irrelevance of Market Highs

Originally in ForbesThis week we’ve heard a lot about the U.S. stock market achieving new highs. So what? Should this record transcendence inspire confidence or fear, action or inaction?

Market High Wire

You’ll find sufficient supporters for both the pessimistic and the optimistic view, with a far greater number of pleas to act on these views. But I invite you to consider the relative irrelevance of market highs for the following simple reason:

Any investment with a positive expected rate of return should regularly revisit and recreate its all-time high as a matter of course. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have a positive expected rate of return!

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Building a Strong Portfolio in 7 Simple Steps

Originally published CNBCThe movement of markets is so incredibly complicated that even the world’s most skilled portfolio managers struggle mightily to “beat the market” over the long-term. Building a strong portfolio, therefore, must be similarly (and singularly) complex, right? Wrong. While portfolio architecture and management is not easy, here is a seven-step process that makes it surprisingly simple:

Step 1: Know thyself.

This ancient Greek wisdom is where we must begin, because personal finance is more personal than it is finance. Investing is complex because we are complex. Therefore, we must understand ourselves before we try to understand the markets. This means honestly gauging your time horizon and the returns necessary to meet your goals, but it’s especially important that you understand your willingness to take risk in the markets. You must take the gut-check test.

Step 2: Understand investing.

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How To Know When To Get Out Of The Market

Originally published CNBCHas the market’s recent volatility worried you? Me too. It’s inevitable. Apparently, it’s how we’re wired. But better understanding that wiring can give us a clear decision-making framework to help us know if and when to get out of the market.

The field of behavioral finance has demonstrated that the pain we derive from market losses impacts us twice as much as the pleasure we feel from market gains. For this reason, investors are well served to name and address these emotions instead of setting them aside as they (unfortunately) have been taught.

We’ve all heard of the cost/benefit decision-making model, but “cost” and “benefit” are intellectual constructs too distant from the actual emotions that drive our decision-making. We need to address the gut—the “pain” and the “pleasure” associated with a tough decision. The following four-step model seeks to merge the head and the gut. And while it’s applicable in virtually any either/or scenario, let’s specifically address the decision to stay invested in the market or to move to cash:

Market Decision Image Cropped

1) The pain of staying invested is that I could lose even more.