Category Archives: math

Breakthrough Drugs, Statistics, and Anecdotes: Three Things Every Individual Investor Needs to Know – Part 1 of 3

11 Monday Nov 2019

Posted by in asset allocation, Education, financial advice, financial goals, financial markets, Financial Media, Financial News, financial planning, financial services industry, investing, investing advice, investing information, investing tips, investment advice, investments, math, personal finance, portfolio, S&P 500, S&P 500 Index, statistics, time series, time series data

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Although the title might appear to be random at first glance, I promise that there is an underlying theme.  This article is the first in a three-part series that will discuss how individual investors are bombarded with information about what happens in the financial market.  Most of the time you might hear that, 5 out of the last 7 times “x” happened, the S&P 500 index went up by 10% or more.  I will argue that most of these types of comments might be useful trivia for the television show, Jeopardy; however, they should not impact your long-term investment plan.

So, why did I use breakthrough drugs?  Prior to any drug coming to the marketplace, the FDA does a very thorough review of the test results to ensure that the drug is safe and also its efficacy is not overstated.  What if I told you that a pharmaceutical firm came up with a possible cure for lung cancer, and there were successful trials of 10 individuals.  Does that sound like a group too small to draw any conclusions?  Would you take a drug that the testing was only done on a handful of people?  Now the FDA would never allow such a thing, and there are tons of protocols and blind or double-blind randomized testing of many individuals.  It just sounds weird if only 10 people were tested, and there was also no control group (i.e. a separate group given a placebo).

While the drug example seems a bit outrageous and contrived, I bet you can think of similar examples in the daily financial press (e.g. financial television or print media).  Whenever you hear a small number of events happening that “tend to” lead to certain financial market outcomes, you should be extremely wary.  For instance, I just heard today that, after the Singles Day huge ecommerce sale by Alibaba, the stock (Ticker Symbol:  BABA) is up 80% of the time over the course of the next two weeks.  Well, when did Alibaba start Singles Day?  The first Singles Day sale was in 2009.  Therefore, we have 10 data points to work with (2009 to 2018).  Given the information I referred to above, the comment made today simply says that the stock has been up after two weeks 8 out of the last 10 years.  Now I will try to hold in my red flags and bit of ludicrous thoughts, this type of information is not informative at all.  There are just too few observations to draw any sort of valid conclusion.

Here is the plan of attack for the next two articles.  The second part of this discussion will focus on statistics.  Yes, I know this topic is not too much fun and can get complicated very quickly.  However, individual investors need to know a bit about statistics to recognize when a quantitative quote is totally useless.  We will not get too granular though, I promise.  Essentially most financial market data is time series data.  Different rules apply in that case, and these rules are broken all the time by even the most sophisticated professional investors and commentators.  The third part of this discussion will be an in-depth examination of an actual event that grounds my argument in recent events.  I will examine what is called the inversion of the yield curve and how it normally portends a recession for the U.S. economy.  Don’t worry; I am going to explain those terms when the third part of this series rolls around.

Please join me in a critical review of all the financial market and economic data you get bombarded with.  So much of it is just “noise” or simply interesting trivia at best.  Note that the interesting trivia cannot guide or inform your particular asset allocation of investments.  As always, if you have questions along the way, please feel free to comment on this or any other article.

How to Become a Successful Long-Term Investor – Summary

30 Monday Sep 2019

Posted by in asset allocation, behavioral finance, correlation, correlation coefficient, Dot Com Bubble, Emotional Intelligence, EQ, financial advice, Financial Advisor, financial goals, financial markets, financial planning, financial services industry, historical returns, Individual Investing, individual investors, investing, investing advice, investing information, investing tips, investment advice, investments, market timing, math, personal finance, portfolio, risk, risk tolerance, risks of stocks, S&P 500, S&P 500 historical returns, S&P 500 Index, standard deviation, statistics, Stock Market Returns, stock prices, stocks, volatility

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The discussion of how to become a successful long-term investor in my three-part series is now finished.  However, the journey is an ongoing one that takes discipline, constant learning, and monitoring your emotional reactions to fluctuations in the financial markets.  I discussed the history of stock market returns of the S&P 500 Index (dividends reinvested) from 1957-2018, the concept of risk, and also the futility of trying to engage in “market timing”.  But you may be asking yourself, why didn’t you tell me what stocks, bonds, and other assets to buy to build my investment portfolio?  That is a valid question, and there is an extremely important reason why that gets at the very heart of my overall discussion.

The best way to answer the question posed above is with an analogy.  Now my international readers will have to indulge me with this example.  My favorite sport is football which is the most popular sport in the world.  Most people in the United States refer to it as soccer and only watch if the men’s or women’s teams are competing in the World Cup.  I could tell you all about the reasons why football clubs rarely use a 4-4-2 formation.  Or I could talk about how the 4-2-3-1 formation has evolved in the Bundesliga.  We also could discuss why goalies now need to be good with their feet in order to pass from the backline.  Finally, I might even be more specific and give my rationale for why Liverpool in the Premier League uses a 4-4-3 formation given their current squad for the 2019-2020 season.

My analogy above relates to long-term investing because I would argue that you should not invest a single dollar in the stock or bond markets without knowing about the history of returns, risks and volatility, and “market timing”.  Most Financial Advisors (FAs), Certified Financial Planners (CFPs), and Registered Investment Advisors (RIAs) jump right into the discussion of how to build an investment portfolio taking into account your financial goals and risk tolerance.  This conversation is directly related to the football analogy above.  Without a firm understanding of investing at a high level (or the general way football is played first), you are likely to fail in your resolve to stick with a long-term focus while investing.  For example, when you are asked if you can tolerate a 20% decline in the stock market, how should you answer?  I would say that, if you do not have some grasp of historical returns and the level of risk, you cannot properly answer.  Remember that we covered how often you will experience negative returns (including 20% declines) in the first article.  You need to understand the “composition of the forest before deciding how to deal with the trees”.

Here are the links to the three articles to have an understanding of first prior to jumping into the mix of long-term investing strategy and building an actual portfolio of investments.

Part 1 – Understanding Historical Stock Market Returns:

https://latticeworkwealth.com/2019/09/23/successful-long-term-investing/

Part 2 – Understanding and Managing Risk:

https://latticeworkwealth.com/2019/09/25/successful-long-term-investor-risk/

Part 3 – Giving up on the Allure of “Market Timing”:

https://latticeworkwealth.com/2019/09/28/successful-long-term-investing-market-timing/

Once you have a firm grasp on these topics, you are ready to get your feet wet in the world of investing.

For those of you wanting a little bit of guidance because your intention is the manage your investments personally, I have written about this topic in the past.  I wrote a two-part series on how to build an investment portfolio and monitor the performance returns of that investment portfolio.  I have included the links below:

Part 1 – Building an Investment Portfolio:

https://latticeworkwealth.com/2013/07/16/how-to-create-an-investment-portfolio-and-properly-measure-your-performance-part-1-of-2/

Part 2 – Monitoring the Performance of an Investment Portfolio:

https://latticeworkwealth.com/2013/07/19/how-to-create-an-investment-portfolio-and-properly-measure-your-performance-part-2-of-2/

Those two articles above will provide you with some ways to go about creating your own investment portfolio without the assistance of a financial professional.  While it does contain a lot of information and suggestions, individual investors who are complete novices may find it easier and less confusing to seek out someone to guide them with investment selection, measuring risk tolerance, and understanding the goals of their financial plan.

In summary, I appreciate you taking the time to read my thoughts in regard to successful long-term investing.  As you can see successful investing has more to do with preparation, setting realistic expectations, and knowing how you personally respond to risk.  These topics need to be studied prior to investing money yourself or before going to seek out investment advice from a financial professional.  If you have any questions, comments, feedback, or disagreements, you can feel free to let me know.

How to Become a Successful Long-Term Investor – Part 3 of 3 – The Folly of Market Timing

28 Saturday Sep 2019

Posted by in Alan Greenspan, asset allocation, Average Returns, behavioral finance, bubbles, correlation, correlation coefficient, Dot Com Bubble, finance, finance theory, financial goals, financial markets, Financial Media, Financial News, financial planning, Greenspan, historical returns, Individual Investing, individual investors, Internet Bubble, investing, investing advice, investing information, investing tips, investment advice, investments, Irrational Exuberance, market timing, math, personal finance, portfolio, risk tolerance, risks of stocks, S&P 500, S&P 500 historical returns, S&P 500 Index, statistics, stock market, Stock Market Returns, Stock Market Valuation, stock prices, stocks, Valuation, volatility

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This article is the third and final post in my three-part series on learning how to be a successful long-term investor.  The general theme underlying all of the topics has been developing enough of an understanding of the stock market gyrations and sometimes wild ride to form reasonable expectations at the outset.  Those expectations lead directly into to developing a long-term investment strategy and plan that you are much more likely to stick with through “thick and thin” because you know what is coming.  Of course, you will not know the order in which the ups and downs may come, but you will have a ton of information helpful to be much less likely to lose your nerve or get overly excited.

The last topic will be about “market timing”.  We will delve deeply into the concept and see how very difficult it has been in the past, and, I believe, will continue to be for the foreseeable future.  Now the discussion to follow will be entirely self-contained; however, it might be helpful to take a look at the first two articles to have additional context.  The opening topic was an overview of the history of stock market returns using the S&P 500 Index (dividends reinvested).  Here is a link to that post:

https://latticeworkwealth.com/2019/09/23/successful-long-term-investing/

The second topic was a discussion about the concept of risk.  We explored how it is normally defined, ways that you can gauge your tolerance for risk given the information from the first post, and explored some methods/mindsets to reduce risk in your investment portfolio.  Here is a link to that post:

https://latticeworkwealth.com/2019/09/25/successful-long-term-investor-risk/

So now, we will turn to the topic for the last article.  As mentioned above, we are going to take a look at “market timing”.  In general, the idea of “market timing” is to develop ways to be able to buy stocks when they are very undervalued and also sell stocks right near the market peak to avoid a big downturn.  There are certain variations where an investor is not necessarily trying to time the most opportune time but trade along with the momentum of the stock market and anticipating the next movement prior to other stock market participants.

“Market timing” is notoriously difficult to do.  But you will see considerable time devoted every day to financial market television and periodicals advising individual investors what trades to make.  I would submit that following things and pundits on a daily basis adds to “noise” and “information overload”.  Additionally, for every guest that predicts a big leg up in the market, there will be another guest later in the day who tells you that we are in a bubble and stocks will drop dramatically soon.

Another lesser talked about item is the main guests that are invited to speak on television or are quoted in financial periodicals.  Typically, the guest introduction will be prefaced by this man/woman predicted the last major move in the stock market and we are so lucky to have him/her back again.  While these guests are great to hear from, there is a severe amount of “selection bias”.  What do I mean by “selection bias”?  You will rarely see a guest brought on to be lambasted for a prediction that never came to fruition or was just flat out wrong.  The vast majority of guests on television or market experts in financial articles will be the ones who made a very prescient call on the direction of the stock market.

The promise of “market timing” is still so enticing.  It normally relates to the fear of losing money or the greed of just not wanting to miss the next big bull market trend upward in the stock market.  However, the ability to call the market tops or bottoms has proven to be pretty much a 50/50 flip of the coin (now I am being generous at that).  One of the examples that I love to give is the coining of the term “irrational exuberance”.  The former chair of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, used that new term to state that the stock market was in what he thought was a bubble.  Little do people remember, but he first gave the speech in December 1996 to refer to what would become the Dot.Com bubble and bust.  Greenspan was proven right but the top of that bubble occurred in March 2000.  I use that example because irrational activity in the markets can persist for much, much longer than you might expect.

So, now I know that some people reading this post will be able to point to experts who made the great calls or even their own calls on the direction of the stock market.  Well, I will start off the discussion by showing that “market timing” is indeed somewhat possible.  But it takes much longer periods of time than you might think at first.  Here is how we will proceed in the analysis.  I discussed how the long-term historical average of the S&P 500 Index from 1957-2018 has been 9.8%.  It would seem logical then that, if stock market returns were below that average or above that average for a certain length of time, you could just do the opposite figuring that stock market returns would eventually trend back to that average (in the jargon reversion to the mean).

The problem is, as I briefly mentioned in the last paragraph, that the time period needs to be so long that it is almost untenable for individual investors to practically implement.  In fact, we have to use 15-year annualized returns to illustrate the theory.  So, if the stock market has been below/above trend, we will buy/sell because an inflection point has to come.  Let’s take a look at it graphically to drive the point home:

Fifteen Year Correlation

In the graph depicted above, we have exactly the returns we would like to see.  The blue dots are the past 15 years of stock market returns, and the orange dots are the next 15 years of stock market returns.  The dots are what we would term to have an inverse relationship.  In fact, for all of you somewhat familiar with statistics, the correlation coefficient is -0.857.  Therefore, there is a really strong relationship here that leads us to the promise of “market timing”.  Should we give up on it so early?

The problem with “market timing” is that, for any length of time less than 15 years of annualized stock returns, there really is no relationship (at least no actionable trading of stocks for your investment portfolio).  Let’s take a look at the same concept in the first graph with a look at one-year and three-year current and then future returns:

One Year Correlation

Three Year Correlation

Using the one-year and three-year current and then future stock market returns of the S&P 500 Index, our dots just kind of do not follow a discernable pattern.  Again, for the statistically inclined folks out there, the correlation coefficients are -0.10 and -0.041, respectively.  As always, we won’t get too waded down into the mathematical weeds but a correlation coefficient close to 0 means that there is essentially no correlation/relationship between the two.  To make an analogy, you can think of what is the correlation between birds in your backyard and the number of jars of pickles for sale at your local grocery store?  Well, there should be no relationship whatsoever.  Even if there were, it would not make any sense.  In our case here, there is at least some logic underlying our premise of the most recent return on the S&P 500 Index and the future returns over that same time period.  As we see though, there is really nothing actionable to embark upon for individual investors to properly engage in “market timing”.

Before we totally give up on “market timing”, we can take a look at the same charts but extending the time periods to five years and ten years.  Let’s take a look at those two graphs:

Five Year Correlation

Ten Year Correlation

The correlation coefficient for the five-year chart is 0.028, so we cannot really use that long of a time period either.  I will admit that the ten-year chart looks a little more promising.  We have a graph that looks somewhat more like the fifteen-year graph that I started off with.  In fact, the correlation coefficient is -0.276.  And a negative number is what we want to see in order to try “market timing”.  Unfortunately, the number is really not strong enough to not get caught.  By this I mean, we can see that “market timing” would have worked from 1975-1985 and also from 1990-2001 roughly.  However, 1965-1975 has a grouping of returns that don’t work and 2002-2008 has mixed results as well.  Note that there are less data points because there needs to be at least 10 years of future returns in order to compare the current record of 10-year annualized returns with what the next 10 years of stock returns will end up being.

Overall, we have seen that “market timing” in the short term (even as defined out to five years) does not really have much, if any, predictive power.  Therefore, if you make decisions related to “market timing” based upon how the stock market has performed in any time period five years or less, it is clearly a “fool’s errand” or incredibly difficult to do.  And by the latter, I mean that you can reliably do so over more than one major change in market direction.  The majority of market pundits that you will see or read about have made one correct call which is not nearly enough to judge his/her investing acumen related to “market timing”.

I will close out the discussion of “market timing” by using the Financial Crisis and ensuing Great Recession.  Many folks correctly called (or were proven right without the reason for the bubble matching their investment thesis) this major stock market inflection point.  They correctly saw the unsustainable bubble in housing, the rise of financial stocks, and the buildup of toxic securities like subprime loans.  However, many of those same individuals never changed their investment thesis and failed to tell individual investors to return to the stock market and buy.  Essentially there are still folks that will tell you we are in a bubble.  Now I am not bold and/or grandiose enough to weigh in on the current value of the stock market.  But you need to know that most of the people who call a wicked crash in stocks or a massive bull market do not change their investment thesis prior to the next big turn.

For example, let’s say that you learned about stock investing 10 years or so ago and decided to invest $1,000.00 in the S&P 500 Index toward the end of October 2007.  And yes, this was the absolute worst time to invest in stocks.  Sadly, by March 2009, you would have lost 50% of your investment and have only $500.00 at that point in time.  You might feel great if you listened to someone who called the top and told you that the fourth quarter of 2007 was the absolute worse time to buy stocks.  But I am willing to bet that this same person would not have told you when it was “safe” to invest again.  If you knew to expect bouts of extreme volatility in the stock market beforehand, you could have kept your money in the stock market.  At the end of December 2018, you would have had $1,712.36 using our 13.1% 10-year annualized return over that time.  If the original market predictor of catastrophe told you to just keep your $1,000.00 in the bank you would have $1,160.54 (assuming generously that you could earn 1.50% over the ten years in your bank saving account).  Adjusting the hypothetical investor who simply kept his/her money in stocks back to inflation, he/she would have $1,404.73 (assuming 2.0% inflation over the last 10 years which is higher than was actually experienced).  At the end of December 2018, you would have a bit more than 21% higher in inflation-adjusted dollars than the person who just never invested (or took his/her money out of stocks right at the end of October 2007 but never returned to stocks).

Now I will admit that my hypothetical scenario would have tried the “intestinal fortitude” of the most seasoned professional investors after seeing a 50% market drop over 1.5 years.  My only point with the example is that, even if you could not have held your nerve to remain invested in stocks over the Financial Crisis, the investment pundit(s) who tells you the exact top with a brilliant prediction also needs to tell you when to invest or sell again in the future (i.e. “market timing”).  Rarely will you see such a prognosticator that can totally change their investment thesis to get the next call right.  You are much better off abstaining from “market timing” and sticking to your long-term investment strategy.  Of course, that may indeed call for selling or buying a portion of stocks at certain given points to change your investment portfolio allocation to match your risk tolerance and financial goals.  But trying to utilize “market timing” to be in and out to experience hardly any losses and capture all the gains is just not realistic, so you might as well discard the entire investment strategy of “market timing”.

How to Become a Successful Long-Term Investor – Part 2 of 3 – Understanding and Reducing Risk

25 Wednesday Sep 2019

Posted by in asset allocation, behavioral finance, Consumer Finance, Education, finance, finance theory, financial advice, Financial Advisor, financial goals, financial markets, Financial Media, Financial News, financial planning, financial services industry, Geometric Returns, historical returns, Individual Investing, individual investors, investing, investing advice, investing tips, investment advice, investments, math, Modern Portfolio Theory, MPT, personal finance, portfolio, risk, risk tolerance, risks of stocks, S&P 500, S&P 500 historical returns, S&P 500 Index, standard deviation, statistics, stock market, Stock Market Returns, Stock Market Valuation, stock prices, stocks, volatility

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Another extremely important part of being a long-term investor is to understand the concept of risk.  Financial professionals define risk in a number of different ways, and we will examine some of those definitions.  The overarching goal is to look at risk from the standpoint of the volatility or dispersion of stock market returns.  Diversification of various investments in your portfolio is normally the way that most financial professionals discuss ways to manage the inevitable fluctuations in one’s investment portfolio.  However, there is another more intuitive way to reduce risk which will be the topic of this second part of this examination into becoming a successful long-term investor.

The first part of this series on long-term investing was a look back at the historical returns of the S&P 500 Index (including the reinvestment of dividends).  The S&P 500 Index will again be the proxy used to view the concept of risk.  If you have not had a chance to read the first part of the series, I would urge you to follow the link provided below.  Note that it is not a prerequisite to follow along with the discussion to come, but it would be helpful to better understand the exploration of risk in this article.

The link to part one of becoming a successful long-term investor is:

https://latticeworkwealth.com/2019/09/23/successful-long-term-investing/

But now we will turn our attention to risk.  Risk can be a kind of difficult or opaque concept that is discussed by financial professionals.  Most individual investors have a tough time following along.  Sometimes there is a lot of math and statistics included with the overview.  Although this information is helpful, we need to build up to that aspect.  However, there will be no detailed calculations utilized in this article that might muddy the waters further.  I believe it helps to take a graphical approach and then build up to what some individual investors consider the harder aspects of grasping risk.

Risk related to investing in stocks can be defined differently, but the general idea is that stocks do not go up or down in a straight line.  As discussed in depth in part one, the annual return of the S&P 500 Index jumps around by a large margin.  Most individual investors are surprised at seeing the wide variation.  Ultimately, the long-term historical average of the S&P 500 Index from 1957 to 2018 is 9.8%.  But rarely does the average annual return end up being anywhere near that number.

The first way I would like to look at risk within the context of long-term investing is to go back to our use of “buckets” of returns.  If you have not already read part one, I used “buckets” with ranges of 5% to see where stock returns fit in.  As it relates to risk, we are only going to look at the “bucket” that includes the historical average 7% to 12% and then either side of that “bucket” (2% to 7% and 12% to 17%).  Additionally, we will look at yearly stock returns and then annualized stock returns for three years, five years, and ten years.  Here is our first graph:

Returns on Either Side of Historical Average

The main takeaway from viewing this graph is that, as the length of time increases, more stock market returns for the S&P 500 Index group around the historical average for the index of 9.8%.  Remember that part one covered the useful information that, even though the historical average to be expected from investing in stocks is 9.8%, individual investors need to know that it can take long periods of time to see that historical average.  In fact, if we look only at one-year increments, approximately 33.9% of stock returns will fall into the range of 2% to 17%.    Or, if we use our yearly equivalent, stock market returns will only fall within that range 1 out of every 3 years.  When individual investors see this graph for the first time, they are usually shocked and somewhat nervous about investing in stocks.

The important thing to keep in mind is that as the length of time examined increased many more stock returns fall into this range.  The numbers are 65.0%, 67.1%, and 81.1%, for three years, five years, and ten years, respectively.  Converting those numbers to yearly equivalents we have about 6-7 years out of ten for three years and five years.  And, as one would intuitively suspect, the longest timeframe of ten years will have stock returns falling into the 2% to 17% range roughly 8 in every 10 years.  Now that still means that 20% to 35% of long-term returns fall outside of that range when considering all those time periods.  But I believe that it is certainly much more palatable for individual investors than looking at investing through the lens of only one-year increments.

Another aspect of risk is what would be termed downside protection.  Most individual investors are considered to be risk averse.  This term is just a fancy way of saying that the vast majority of investors need a lot more expected positive returns to compensate them for the prospect of losing large sums of money.  Essentially an easier way to look at this term is that most individual investors have asymmetric risk tolerances.  All that this means in general is that a 10% loss is much more painful than the pleasure of a 10% gain in the minds of most investors.  Think about yourself in these terms.  What would you consider the offset to be equal when it comes to losing and earning money in the stock market?  Would you need the prospect of a 15% positive return (or 20%, 25% and so forth) to offset the possibility of losing 10% of your money in any one year?  Let’s look at the breakdown of the number of years that investors will experience a loss.  To be consistent with my first post, I am going to use the “bucket” of -3% to 2% and work down from there.  Here is the graph:

Returns Less than 2%

There are 61 years of stock market returns from the S&P 500 Index for the period 1957 to 2018.  If we look at the category of 1 year, stock market returns were 2% or less 38.7% of the time (17 years out of 61 years).  However, if we move to five-year and ten-year annualized returns, there were no observations in the -3% to -8%, -8% to -13%, or less than -13% “buckets”.  When looking at losing money by investing in the stock market, a long-term focus and investment strategy will balance out very negative return years and your portfolio is less likely to be worth significantly less after five or ten years.  Of course, there are no guarantees and perfect foresight is something that we do not have.  However, I believe that looking carefully at the historical data shows why it is important to not be so discouraged by years when the stock market goes down and even stays down for longer than just one year.  Hopefully these figures do provide you with more fortitude to resist the instinct to sell stocks when the stock market takes a deep decline if your investment horizon and financial goals are many, many years out into the future.

The final concept I would like to cover is standard deviation.  The term standard deviation comes up more often than not either in discussions with financial professionals during client meetings or is used a lot in the financial media.  There are many times when even the professionals use the term and explain things incorrectly, but we will save that conversation for another post.  Standard deviation is a statistical term that really is a measure of how far away stock market returns are from the mean (i.e. the average).  It is a concept related to volatility or dispersion.  So, the higher the number is, the more likely it is that stock market returns will have a wide range of returns in any given year.  Let’s first take a look at a graph to put things into context.  Here it is:

Standard Deviation

The chart is striking in terms of how much the standard deviation decreases as the time period increases.  A couple things to note.  First, I do not want to confuse you with a great deal of math or statistical jargon and calculations.  My point is not to obscure the main idea.  Second, the 25-year and 50-year numbers are just included only to cover the entire period of 1957 to 2018 for the S&P 500 Index.  These periods of time are not of much use to individual investors to consider their tolerance for risk and the right investments to include in their portfolios.  And, as one of the most famous economists of the 20th century, John Maynard Keynes, quipped:  “In the long run, we are all dead”.  My only point is that discussion of how the stock market has performed over 25 years or longer is just not relevant to how most individuals think.  It is nice to know but not very useful from a practical perspective.

The main item of interest from the graph above of standard deviation is that you can “lower” the risk of your portfolio just by lengthening your time horizon to make investment decisions on buying or selling stock.  For example, the standard deviation goes down 46.9% (to 8.95% from 16.87%) between one-year returns and three-year annualized returns.  Why do I use “lower”?  Well, the risk of your portfolio will stay constant over time and focusing on longer periods of time will not decrease the volatility per se.  However, most financial professionals tell their clients to not worry about day-to-day fluctuations in the stock market.  Plus, most Financial Advisors tell their clients to not get too upset when reviewing quarterly brokerage statements.  This advice is very good indeed.  However, I urge you to lengthen the period of your concern about volatility in further out into time.  My general guideline to the individuals that I assist in building financial portfolios, setting a unique risk tolerance, and planning for financial goals is to view even one year as short term akin to examining your quarterly brokerage statement.

Why?  If you are in what is termed the “wealth accumulation” stage of life (e.g. saving for retirement), what occurs on a yearly basis is of no concern in the grand scheme of things.  The better investment strategy is to consider three years as short term, five years as medium term, and ten years as the long term.  I think that even retirees can benefit with this type of shift.  Now please do not get me wrong.  I am not advising that anyone make absolutely no changes to his/her investment portfolio for one-year increments.  Rather, annual returns in the stock market vary so widely that it can lead you astray from building a long-term investing strategy that you can stick to when stock market returns inevitably decline (sometimes precipitously and by a large margin).  Note that all the academic theories, especially Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT), were built using an assumption of a one-year holding period for stocks (also bonds, cash, and other investments).  Most individual investors do not fall into the one-year holding period.  Therefore, it does not make much sense to overly focus on such a short time period.

Of course, the next thought and/or comment that comes up is “what if the stock market is too high and I should sell to avoid the downturn?”.  I will not deny that this instinct is very real and will never go away for individual investors.  In fact, a good deal of financial media television coverage and news publications are devoted to advising people on this very topic every single day.   It is termed “market timing”.  In the third and last article in this series on becoming a successful long-term investor, I am going to examine “market timing” with the same stock market data from the S&P 500 Index.  You will clearly see why trying to time the market and buy/sell or sell/buy at the right time is extremely difficult to do (despite what the financial pundits might have you believe given the daily commentary).

Bonds Have Risks Other Than Rising Interest Rates. Dividend Stocks are not Substitutes for Bonds.

24 Sunday Jul 2016

Posted by in academics, asset allocation, bond basics, bond market, Bond Mathematics, Bond Risks, bonds, Fabozzi, finance, finance theory, financial advice, Financial Advisor, financial goals, financial markets, Financial Media, financial planning, financial services industry, Fixed Income Mathematics, foreign currency, Frank Fabozzi, Individual Investing, individual investors, interest rates, investing, investing advice, investing information, investing tips, investment advice, investments, math, MBS, personal finance, rebalancing, rebalancing investment portfolio, rising interest rate environment, rising interest rates, risk, risks of bonds, Search for Yield, statistics, types of bonds, volatility, yield

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The main reason why Financial Advisors are recommending that individual investors sell bonds is that interest rates are likely to rise over the next 3-5 years or more.  Although those sentiments have been a familiar refrain over the last 3-5 years though.  Well, I would tend to agree that interest rates are poised to rise at some point toward the end of this decade.  However, interest rate risk is only one of the risks of bonds.  In fact, the size of the bond market dwarfs the stock market.  When Financial Advisors are talking about bonds, they tend to be referring only to US Treasury bonds, corporate bonds, and municipal bonds.  Interest rate risk greatly affects these bonds indeed.  With that being said, they tend to conflate the interest rate risk of these bonds with the entire bond market.  Remember that interest rates have dropped from 16.30% on the 1-month US Treasury bill back in 1981 to roughly 0.25% today.  Therefore, bond prices have been rising for over 35 years and most financial professionals outside of the fixed income markets have forgotten (or if they are younger than 50) how bonds normally work, especially in a rising interest rate environment.

But does it even matter really? Yes.  Here is an urgent note to all individual investors:  “Beware of financial professionals that recommend dividend stocks or other equities as replacements for your fixed income allocation”.  What I mean by this is that the volatility of stocks is far greater than bonds historically.  Yields may be very low in money market funds, US Treasuries, and in bond mutual funds now.  However, your risk tolerance must be taken into account at all times.  While it is true that many dividend-paying stocks offer yields of 3% or more with the possibility of capital appreciation, there also is significant downside risk.  For example, as most people are aware, the S&P 500 index (which represents most of the biggest companies in America) was down over 35% in 2008.  Many of those stocks are included in the push to have individual investors buy dividend payers.  With that being said, stock market declines of 10%-20% in a single quarter are not that uncommon.  If you handle the volatility of the stock market well, there is no need to be concerned.  However, a decline of 10% for a stock paying a 3% dividend will wipe out a little more than 3 years of yield.  Individual investors need to realize that swapping traditional bonds or bond mutual funds is not a “riskless” transaction, meaning a one-for-one swap.  The volatility and riskiness of your portfolio will go up commensurately with your added exposure to equities.  Sometimes financial professionals portray the search for yield by jumping into stocks as the only option given the low interest rate environment.

While your situation might warrant that movement in your portfolio allocation, you need to be able to accept that the value of those stocks is likely to drop by 10% or more in the future just taking into account normal volatility in the stock market historically (every 36 months or so in any given quarter).  Are you able to handle that volatility when looking at your risk tolerance, financial goals, and age?The purpose of this blog post is to discuss the risk factors associated with bonds in greater detail.  Most bonds, such as Treasury notes and bonds, corporate bonds, and municipal bonds, will go down in value when interest rates go up.  Conversely, they will go up in value when interest rates decrease.  This characteristic of these types of bonds is called an inverse relationship.  For a primer on how most bonds function normally, I have posted supplementary material alongside this post.  You can refer to it to brush back up on bonds and how they work, and I also provide a historical look at interest rates over the last 35 years.  Here is the link to that prior blog post:https://latticeworkwealth.com/2014/01/02/a-bond-is-a-bond-is-a-bond-right-should-you-sell-bonds-to-buy-stocks-supplementary-information-on-how-bonds-work/

There are many risk factors associated with investments in bonds.  A great overview of those risks can be found in Fixed Income Mathematics the Fourth Edition by Dr. Frank Fabozzi who teaches at Yale University’s School of Management.  Most fixed income traders, portfolio managers, and risk managers use his Handbook of Fixed Income Securities as their general guidebook for approaching dealing with the trading, investing, and portfolio/risk management of owning fixed income securities.  Suffice it to say that he is regarded as one of the experts when it comes to the bond markets.  Dr. Fabozzi summarizes the risks inherent in bonds on page 109 of the first text referenced above.  The risks are as follows:

  • Interest-rate risk;
  • Credit risk;
  • Liquidity risk;
  • Call or prepayment risk;
  • Exchange-rate risk.

Most of fixed income folks and myself would add inflation risk, basis risk, and separate credit risk into two components.  Bonds have two types of risk as it relates to payment of principal and interest.  The first risk is more commonly thought of and referred to as default risk.  Default risk is simply whether or not the company will pay you back in full and with timely interest payments.  Credit risk also can be thought of as the financial strength of the company.  If a company starts to see a reduction in profits, much higher expenses, and drains of cash, the rating agencies may downgrade their debt.  A downgrade just means that the company is less likely to pay back the bondholder.Here is an example to illustrate the difference more fully:  a company may have a AA+ rating from Standard & Poor’s at the beginning of the year, but, due to events that transpire during the year, the company may get downgraded to A- with a Negative Outlook.  Now the company is still very likely to pay back principal and interest on the bonds, but the probability of default has gone up.  As a point of reference, AAA is the highest and BBB- is the lowest Standard & Poor’s ratings to be considered investment grade.  You will note that the hypothetical company would need to be downgraded four more times (BBB+, BBB, BBB- to BB+) to be considered non-investment grade or a “junk” bond.   Bond market participants though will react to the downgrade though because new potential buyers see more risk of default given the same coupon.  So even though the company may not default eventually on the actual bond, the price of the bond goes up to compensate for the interest rate required by the marketplace on similarly rated bonds to attract buyers.Now I will address the full list of risks affecting bonds outlined by Dr. Fabozzi above.  Any bond is simply an agreement between two parties in which one party agrees to pay back money to the other party at a later date with interest.

All bonds have what is referred to as credit (default portion) risk.  Credit risk in general is simply the risk one runs that the party who owes you the money will not pay you back (i.e. default).  What is lesser known or thought about by individual investors is interest-rate risk and inflation risk.  These two risks are usually missed because investors tend to think that bonds are “safe”.  Interest-rate risk relates to the fact that interest rates may rise, while you hold the bonds (spoken about at length in the beginning of this blog post).  When financial pundits make blanket statements about selling bonds, they are referring to this one risk factor normally.  Inflation risk means that inflation may increase to a level higher than your interest rate on the bond.  Thus, if the interest rate on your bond is less than inflation or closer to inflation from when you bought the bond, your purchasing power goes down.  The prices of goods and services go up faster than the interest you earn on the bond.  Call risk refers to instances where some companies have the option to redeem your bonds in the future at an agreed upon price.  This is normally done only when interest rates fall. Prepayment risk is a more specialized case of call risk and refers to people paying their mortgages (or credit cards, home equity loans, student loans, etc.) back sooner than expected.  Most people group these two risks into a category called reinvestment risk.  Think about the concept in this manner:  many people refinanced their mortgages because interest rates went down.  They did so because they could lower their total mortgage payment.  Well, companies do the same thing if they have the option.  Companies can redeem bonds at higher interests and issue new bonds at lower interest rates.  Chances are that, if you are the owner of the redeemed bonds, you will be unable to find as high of an interest payment currently if you want to buy a bond with similar characteristics of the company issuing the bonds you own before.The other three risks I mentioned above are less commonly discussed and not quite as important.

Exchange-rate risk exists because sometimes a company issues bonds in a currency other than its own.  For example, you will sometimes hear the terms Yankee bonds or Samurai bonds.  Since the company is paying you interest and principal in a foreign currency that money may be worth more or less depending on what happens in foreign exchange markets in the future.

Liquidity risk refers to the phenomenon that there are certain crisis times in the market where very few, if any bond market participants, are willing to buy the bonds you are trying to sell.  Therefore, you might have to take a bigger loss in order to entice someone to buy the bonds given the current macro environment.

Basis risk is a more obtuse type of risk that institutions deal with.  Basis risk essentially refers to anytime when interest rates on your bond are pegged to another interest rate that is different but normally behaves in a certain way (referred to as correlation).  Now most of the time, the behavior will follow the historical pattern.  However, during times of stress like a liquidity and/or credit crisis, the correlations tend to break down.  Meaning you can think you are “hedged” but, if the historical relationship does not hold up, your end return will be nothing like what you had expected.  These two risks are not something that individual investors need to focus on for the most part, since these types of bonds are not normally owned by them.I will admit that this list is quite lengthy and, quite possibly, a bit too detailed and/or complicated.  However, I wanted to lay them all out for you.  Why?  When you hear Financial Advisors recommend that you sell a large portion of your bonds, and/or hear the same investment advice from the financial media, they normally are really only referring to interest-rate risk primarily and secondarily inflation risk as well.  As you can see from the description above, the bond market is far more complex than that to make a blanket statement.Now, as I usually say, I would never advise individual investors to take a certain course of action in terms of selecting specific bonds or not selling bonds to move into more stocks.  However, I am saying that you should feel comfortable enough to ask your Financial Advisor why he/she recommends that you sell a portion of your bonds.  If the answer relates only to interest-rate risk, I would probe the recommendation further.  You can explain that you know that is the case for Treasury notes/bonds, municipal bonds, and corporate bonds.  However, there are a whole host of other fixed income securities with different characteristics and risks.  Now I am not referring solely to Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS), although the residential and commercial markets for these are in the trillions of dollars.  There are bonds and notes that have floating interest rates which means that as interest rates go up, the interest rate you receive on that security goes up.  Not to mention that different countries are experiencing different interest rate cycles than the US (stable or downward even).The complete list is too in-depth to cover in a single blog post.  My goal was to provide you with enough information to at least ask the question(s).  Your risk tolerance and financial goals might make a move from bonds to stocks the best course of action.  With that being said, you also have the option of selling bonds and keeping the money in cash or investing in the different types of bonds offered in the fixed income markets while keeping your total allocation to fixed income nearly the same.  Thinking holistically about your portfolio, you may be increasing the riskiness of your portfolio beyond your risk tolerance or more than you are aware unbeknownst to you by moving from bonds into stocks.  This is something you definitely want to avoid.    It can turn out to be a rude awakening and hard lesson to learn one or two years from now.

The First Key to Successful Stock Investing is Understanding and Accepting Reality – Updated

16 Wednesday Mar 2016

Posted by in asset allocation, Average Returns, bonds, business, college finance, Consumer Finance, Education, Emotional Intelligence, finance, finance theory, financial advice, financial goals, financial markets, financial planning, financial services industry, Geometric Returns, Individual Investing, individual investors, investing, investing advice, investing information, investing tips, investment advice, investments, math, personal finance, portfolio, risk, risk tolerance, statistics, stock market, Stock Market Returns, stock prices, stocks, Uncategorized, volatility

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This particular topic is so important that I decided to revisit it again. The discussion below adds further refinements and creates an even stronger tie to behavioral finance (i.e. how emotions affect investment decisions).  Additionally, for those of you who desire more in-depth coverage of the math and statistics presented, I have included that at the very end of this article.  Let’s delve deeper into this topic and what is meant by “reality”.

The first key to successful stock investing has more to do with your emotions than a fundamental understanding of what causes stocks to move up or down. Emotions about money can be a powerful thing and cause people to behave in irrational ways.  One of the most common phrases passed on to investors as a piece of wisdom is to “buy low and sell high”.  However, study after study has shown that most individual investors fail to heed that advice.  Why does this happen?  Well, I would submit the real cause is behavioral and based upon incomplete information.

Most individual investors are told when they start investing in stocks via mutual funds and/or ETFs to expect an annual return of 8% to 9% per year. You will find that many financial calculators to help you plan for retirement on the Internet have that as one of the inputs to calculate the growth of your portfolio over time.  While that information is not too far off the mark based upon historical returns of the S&P 500 stock index, the actual annual returns of stocks do not cooperate to the constant frustration and consternation of so many investors.

That brings us to the first key to successful stock investing:  The actual yearly returns of stocks very rarely equal the average expected.  The most common term for this phenomenon is referred to as volatility.  Stocks tend to bounce around quite a bit from year to year.  Volatility combines with the natural instinct of people to extrapolate from the recent past, and investing becomes a very difficult task.  I will get deeper into the numbers at the very end of the post for those readers who like to more fully understand the concepts I discuss.  I do need talk in general about annual stock returns at this point to expand upon the first key.

Below I have provided a chart of the annual returns of the S&P 500 index for every year in the 21st century:

 

Year % Return
2001 -11.90%
2002 -22.10%
2003 28.70%
2004 10.90%
2005 4.90%
2006 15.80%
2007 5.50%
2008 -37.00%
2009 26.50%
2010 15.10%
2011 2.10%
2012 16.00%
2013 32.40%
2014 13.70%
2015 1.40%

 

What is the first thing you notice when looking at the yearly returns in the table? First, you might notice that they really jump around a lot.  More importantly, none of the years has a return that is between 8% and 9%.  The closest year is 2004 with a return of 10.9%.  If the only piece of information you have is to expect the historical average over time, the lack of consistency can be extraordinarily frustrating and scary.  In fact, individual investors (and sometimes professional investors too) commonly look back at the last couple of years and expect those actual returns to continue into the future.  Therein lies the problem.  Investors tend to be gleeful when returns have been really good and very fearful when returns have been very low.  Since the average never comes around very often, investors will forget what returns to expect over the long run and will “buy high and sell low”.  It is common to sell stocks after a prolonged downturn and wait until it is “safe” to buy stocks again which is how the sound advice gets turned around.

I will not get too heavy into math and statistics, but I wanted to provide you will some useful information to at least be prepared when you venture out to invest by yourself or by using a financial professional. I looked back at all the returns of the S&P 500 index since 1928 (note the index had lesser numbers of stocks in the past until 1957).  The actual annual return of the index was between 7% and 11% only 5 out of the 88 years or 5.7%.  That statistic means that your annual return in stocks will be around the average once every 17 years.  The 50-year average annual return for the S&P 500 index (1966-2015) was approximately 9.8%.  Actual returns were negative 24 out of 88 years (27.9% of the time) and greater than 15% 42 out of 88 years (48.8% of the time).  How does relate to the first key of stock investing that I mentioned earlier (“The actual yearly returns of stocks very rarely equal the average expected”)?

Well, it should be much easier to see at this point. If you are investing in stocks to achieve the average return quoted in so many sources of 8% to 9%, it is definitely a long-term proposition and can be a bumpy ride.  The average return works out in the end, but you need to have a solid plan, either by yourself or with the guidance financial professional, to ensure that you stick to the long-term financial plan to reach the financial goals that you have set.  Knowing beforehand should greatly assist you in controlling your emotions.  I recommend trying to anticipate what you do when the actual return you achieve by investing in stocks is well below or quite high above the average in your portfolio.  Having this information provides a much better way to truly understand and your risk tolerance when it comes to deciding what percentage of your monies to allocate to stocks in my opinion.

When you look back at the performance returns for stocks, it makes more sense why investors do what they do from the standpoint of behavioral finance. That is how emotions affect (all too often negatively) investment decisions.  If an individual investor is told at the outset that he or she can expect returns of 8% or 9% per year, the actual annual returns of stocks can be quite troubling.  Having that information only leads to a general disadvantage.  When stock returns are negative and nowhere near the average, individual investors tend to panic and sell stocks.  When stock returns are quite higher than the average, individual investors tend to be more euphoric and buy even more stocks.  This affect is magnified when there are a number of consecutive years with one of those two trends.  If stock returns are essentially unchanged, most individual investors become disengaged and really do not even see the point of investing in stocks at all.

I believe it is extremely important to know upfront that stocks are likely to hit the average return once every 17 years. That statistic alone is a real shocker!  It lets individual investors truly see how “unusual” the average return really is.  Plus, there is a better explanation for fear and greed.  Stock market returns will be negative once every 4 years.  Keep in mind this does not even include stock returns that are below the average yet still positive.  Lastly, every other year the stock market returns will be above the average (in my case I was measuring above the average with the definition of that being a stock market return greater than 11%).  It is no wonder why individual investors get greedy when it looks like investing in the stock market is so easy after seeing such great returns.  Conversely, the occurrence of negative returns is so regular that it is only natural for individual investors to panic.  Since the average only comes around approximately once every two decades, that is why confusion abounds and investors abandon their long-term financial plans.

I will readily admit sticking to a long-term financial plan is not easy to do in practice during powerful bull or bear markets, but I think it helps to know upfront what actual stock returns look like and prepare yourself emotionally in additional to the intellectual side of investing.  Now I always mention that statistics can be misleading, conveniently picked to make a point, or not indicative of the future.  Nevertheless, I have tried to present the information fairly and in general terms.

Additional Information on Stock Market Returns (Discussion of Math and Statistics):

Please note that this information may be skipped by individual investors that are scared off by math in general or have no desire to dive deeper into the minutiae. One of the first things to be aware of is what expected returns for stocks are.  An expected return is what the most likely outcome would be in any particular year.  Expected returns provide misleading results when there is a high degree of variability in the entire dataset.  In the case of stock market returns, there is an incredible amount of variability.  The industry term for variability, which is the statistical term, is volatility.  Due to the fact that the expected return almost never happens, it would be wise for the financial services industry to truly and better define volatility.  Most individual investors do not know that there is far more of a range of possible outcomes for stock market returns.  Individual investors associate hearing average returns with some volatility from Financial Advisors or financial media in the same way as the classic “bell curve”.  As discussed in further detail above, the outcomes do not even come close to approximating the “bell curve”.

One important thing to be aware of when it comes to actual performance returns of an individual’s investment portfolio is that average/expected values are not very important. In fact, they really lead to a distorted way of looking at investing.  Average/expected values are based on arithmetic returns, where the overall growth in one’s investment portfolio is tied to geometric returns.  The concept of geometric returns is overlooked or not fully explained to individual investors.  Here is the perfect example of how it comes into play.  Let’s say you own one share of a $100 stock.  It goes down 50% in the first year and then up 50% in the second year.  How much money do you have at the end of the second year?  You have the original $100, right?

Not even close. You end up with $75.  Why?  At the end of the first year, your stock is worth $50 ($100 + $100*-50%) after decreasing 50%.  Since you begin the second year with only that $50, that is why you end up having $75 ($50 + $50 * 50%).  The average annual return is 0% ((-50% + 50%) divided by 2)) for the two-year period.  Whereas your geometric return is negative 13.4%.  Essentially that number shows what happened to the value of your portfolio over the entire timeframe and incorporates the ending value.  Think of it as having $100 + $100 * -13.4% or $86.60 at the end of year one and then $86.60 + $86.60 * -13.4%) or $75.  Note that you never actually have $86.60 as the portfolio’s value at any time, but the geometric return tells you how much money you actually earned (or lost) over the entire period and how much money you end up with, otherwise known as the terminal value of your portfolio.  The geometric return will ALWAYS differ from the arithmetic return when a negative return is introduced as one of the outcomes.  As an individual investor, your primary concern is the terminal value of your portfolio.  That is the dollar value you see on your brokerage statement and is the actual amount of money you have.

Financial professionals forget to focus on geometric returns or even bring them up to clients. This omission is important to individual investors because negative returns have an outsized effect on the terminal value of an investment portfolio.  For example, in the example above, it is quite clear that losing 50% and then gaining 50% do not “cancel each other out”.  The negative percent weighs down the final value of the portfolio.  That is why it is extremely important to use the geometric return of the portfolio.  This result is due to the fact that the compounding of interest is not linear.  It is a geometric equation which is why the geometric mean comes into play.  Without going fully into the explanation of those equations, the main takeaway for investors when it comes to annual returns is that negative returns have more of an effect than positive returns.

Taken together, it is important to utilize the concept of multi-year geometric averages. Individual investors never want to simply add up the annual returns of a series of years and then divided by the number of years.  That result will overstate the amount of money in the investment portfolio at the end of the period.  The preferred approach is to use the geometric average which is referred to as the annualized average return.  That percentage is the number most relevant to investors.  Additionally, longer timeframes of these returns are best to look at given the extreme amount of volatility in yearly stock market returns.  It gives a better picture of how the stock market has moved.

When looking at the stock market returns for the S&P 500 index over five-year periods using the period 2001-2015, they yield surprising yet informative results. The five-year returns from 2001-2005, 2006-2010, and 2011-2015 were 0.54%, 2.30%, and 12.57%, respectively.  Valuable information comes from looking at extended periods of time using the same time increment.  The overall return during 2001-2015 was 5.01%.  The effect of these longer timeframes smooths the stock market return data, but even then the stock market returns vary quite a bit.  Note that the overall return from the entire historical period of the S&P 500 index is roughly 9.50%.  These three selected chunks show two periods of underperformance and one year of outperformance.  The reason stock market returns tend to hover around the historical average is due to the fact that these returns are tied to the overall growth the economy (most commonly Gross Domestic Product – GDP) and corporate profits.  In the meantime though, stock market returns can vary a lot from this expected return.  However, they are unlikely to do so for incredibly long periods of time.

By incorporating the understanding of volatility and geometric returns into your understanding of the “reality” of stock market returns, you will be able to better refine your own risk tolerance and how to craft your long-term financial plan. A better grasp of these concepts makes one far less likely to react emotionally to the market, either with too much fear or too much greed.

The First Key to Successful Stock Investing is Understanding and Accepting Reality

26 Wednesday Mar 2014

Posted by in business, Education, finance, financial planning, Individual Investing, investing, investment advice, investments, math, personal finance, portfolio, risk, statistics, stocks, volatility

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The first key to successful stock investing has more to do with your emotions than a fundamental understanding of what causes stocks to move up or down. Emotions about money can be a powerful thing and cause people to behave in irrational ways. One of the most common phrases passed on to investors as a piece of wisdom is to “buy low and sell high”. However, study after study has shown that most individual investors fail to heed that advice. Why does this happen? Well, I would submit the real cause is behavioral and based upon incomplete information. Let’s dig into that statement a little further and reveal the key as well.

Most individual investors are told when they start investing in stocks via mutual funds and/or ETFs to expect an annual return of 8% to 9% per year. You will find that many financial calculators to help you plan for retirement on the Internet have that as one of the inputs to calculate the growth of your portfolio over time. While that information is not too far off the mark based upon historical returns of the S&P 500 stock index, the actual annual returns of stocks do not cooperate to the constant frustration of so many investors. That brings us to the first key to successful stock investing: The actual yearly returns of stocks very rarely equal the average expected. The most common term for this phenomenon is referred to as volatility. Stocks tend to bounce around quite a bit from year to year. Volatility combines with the natural instinct of people to extrapolate from the recent past, and investing becomes a very difficult task. I will get deeper into the numbers in a later post for those readers who like to more fully understand the concepts I discuss. I do need talk in general about annual stock returns at this point to expand upon the first key.

Below I have provided a chart of the annual returns of the S&P 500 index for every year in the 21st century:

Year

% Return

2001

-11.9%

2002

-22.1%

2003

28.7%

2004

10.9%

2005

4.9%

2006

15.8%

2007

5.5%

2008

-37.0%

2009

26.5%

2010

15.1%

2011

2.1%

2012

16.0%

2013

32.4%

 

What is the first thing you notice when looking at the yearly returns in the table? First, you might notice that they really jump around a lot. More importantly, none of the years has a return that is between 8% and 9%. The closest year is 2004 with a return of 10.9%. If the only piece of information you have is to expect the historical average over time, the lack of consistency can be extraordinarily frustrating and scary. In fact, individual investors (and sometimes professional investors too) commonly look back at the last couple of years and expect those actual returns to continue into the future. Therein lies the problem. Investors tend to be gleeful when returns have been really good and very fearful when returns have been very low. Since the average never comes around very often, investors will forget what returns to expect over the long run and will “buy high and sell low”. It is common to sell stocks after a prolonged downturn and wait until it is “safe” to buy stocks again which is how the sound advice gets turned around.

I will not get too heavy into math and statistics, but I wanted to provide you will some useful information to at least be prepared when you venture out to invest by yourself or by using a financial professional. I looked back at all the returns of the S&P 500 index since 1928 (note the index had lesser numbers of stocks in the past until 1957). The actual annual return of the index was between 7% and 11% only 5 out of the 86 years or 5.8%. That statistic means that your annual return in stocks will be around the average once every 17 years. The 50-year average annual return for the S&P 500 index (1964-2013) was approximately 9.8%. Actual returns were negative 24 out of 86 years (27.9% of the time) and greater than 15% 42 out of 86 years (48.8% of the time). How does relate to the first key of stock investing that I mentioned earlier (“The actual yearly returns of stocks very rarely equal the average expected”)?

Well, it should be much easier to see at this point. If you are investing in stocks to achieve the average return quoted in so many sources of 8% to 9%, it is definitely a long-term proposition and can be a bumpy ride. The average return works out in the end, but you need to have a solid plan, either by yourself or with the guidance financial professional, to ensure that you stick to the long-term financial plan to reach the financial goals that you have set. Knowing beforehand should greatly assist you in controlling your emotions. I recommend trying to anticipate what you will do when the actual return you achieve by investing in stocks is well below or quite high above the average in your portfolio. Having this information provides a much better way to truly understand and your risk tolerance when it comes to deciding what percentage of your monies to allocate to stocks in my opinion. I will readily admit it is not easy to do in practice during powerful bull or bear markets, but I think it helps to know upfront what actual stock returns look like and prepare yourself emotionally in additional to the intellectual side of investing. Now I always mention that statistics can be misleading, conveniently picked to make a point, or not indicative of the future. Nevertheless, I have tried to present the information fairly and in general terms.

As previously mentioned, I will be writing another related blog post that will discuss the numbers in more detail with math and statistics.  I have separated these discussions so that those intimidated by math or who do not want to get into all the details can skip that part.  However, I will be providing some advice on how to use the information I have provided to assist you in moving past the first key to successful stock investing.

A New Paradigm for Investing on 50 year-old Investment Advice Available on Amazon.com

01 Saturday Mar 2014

Posted by in asset allocation, beta, business, Consumer Finance, Education, Fama, finance, financial planning, Free Book Promotion, Individual Investing, investing, investing, investments, stocks, bonds, asset allocation, portfolio, investment advisory fees, investments, Markowitz, math, Modern Portfolio Theory, MPT, passive investing, personal finance, portfolio, risk, Sharpe, sigma, statistics, stock prices, stocks, volatility

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I have decided to make my recently published book FREE for today only, March 1, 2014(it normally retails for $4.99).  The book is another installment in my A New Paradigm for Investing series.  In this particular book, I focus on the use of Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT) as the primary tool by Financial Advisors to recommend portfolio allocations.  The theory is over 50 years old, and most of its assumptions have been shown to be less and less useful.  I explore the reasons why in my text.  I have tried to write in such a manner that you do not need a degree in mathematics or statistics to understand its contents.  Moreover, you do not need to know about the intricacies of MPT in order to follow my logic.  You would find the same information in a college textbook but in a condensed format here.  It actually is quite surprising how little Financial Advisors know about MPT in general and how the ideas apply to individual investors.

Note that this book is available for download onto a Kindle.  Additionally, there is a Kindle app for iPhones and Android devices which is free to download.  Amazon.com Prime Members can borrow the book for FREE as well. I have provided a link below to make it easier.   My email address is latticeworkwealth@gmail.com should you have any questions/comments/feedback.

The book is:

1)      A New Paradigm for Investing:  Is Your Financial Advisor Creating Your Portfolio with a 50 Year-Old Theory?:

http://www.amazon.com/New-Paradigm-Investing-Financial-ebook/dp/B00FQQ0CKG/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1381520643&sr=1-1&keywords=a+New+paradigm+for+investing+by+William+Nelson

I would like to thank my international viewers as well of my blog that can be found at https://latticeworkwealth.com/.  I also wanted to especially thank some selected followers of my @NelsonThought and @LatticeworkWlth Twitter accounts (each of whom I would strongly recommend following for their content and insight):

Followers on @NelsonThought:

–  The Wall Street Journal Wealth Report @WSJwealthreport – #wsjexperts

–  Institutional Investor @iimag

–  The Royce Funds @RoyceFunds – Small Cap value investing asset manager

–  Research Magazine @Research_Mag – Latest industry information for wirehouses and ETFs

–  Barron’s Online @BarronsOnline – Weekly financial news magazine of Dow Jones

–  Cleveland Fed Research @ClevFedResearch

–  Euromoney.com @Euromoney

–  Pedro da Costa @pdacosta – Central banking and economics reporter at The Wall Street Journal

–  Muriel Siebert & Co. @SiebertCo

–  Roger Wohlner, CFP® @rwohlner

–  Ed Moldaver @emoldaver

–  Sylvia Maxfield @sylviamaxfield – Dean of the Providence College of Business

–  The Shut Up Show @theshutupshow

–  Berni Xiong (shUNG) @BerniXiong

Followers on @LatticeworkWlth:

–  Tracy Alloway @tracyalloway – US Financial Correspondent at Financial Times

–  Vanguard FA @Vanguard_FA – Vanguard’s ETF research and education

–  EU External Action @eu_eeas – Latest news from the European External Action Service (EEAS)

–  Direxion Alts @DirexionAlts

–  Charlie Wells @charliewwells – Editor at The Wall Street Journal

–  Jesse Colombo @TheBubbleBubble – Columnist at Forbes

–  Alastair Winter @AlastairWinter – Chief Economist at Daniel Stewart & Company

–  AbsoluteVerification @GIPStips

–  Investment Advisor @InvestAdvMag

–  Gary Oneil @GaryONeil2

–  MJ Gottlieb @MJGottlieb

–  Bob Burg @BobBurg

–  TheMichaelBrown @TheMichaelBrown

–  Phil Gerbyshak @PhilGerbyshak

– MuniCredit @MuniCredit

What is the 800-Pound Gorilla in the Room for Retirees? It is 12.5.

26 Wednesday Feb 2014

Posted by in active investing, active versus passive debate, asset allocation, bonds, business, Education, Fiduciary, finance, financial advisor fees, financial planning, Individual Investing, investing, investing, investments, stocks, bonds, asset allocation, portfolio, investment advisory fees, investments, math, passive investing, personal finance, portfolio, risk, stocks, volatility

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The 12.5 I am referring to is 12.5%, and it relates to investment advisory fees.  I have discussed the effects of investment advisory fees at length in previous posts.  In general, most individual investors pay fees to financial services firms that are too high in comparison to the value provided in many cases.  For example, the vast majority of individual investors do not need complex, strategic tax planning, estate planning and legal advice, or sophistical financial planning.  However, the firms that most people invest with offer those services within the fee structure.  There is very little in the way of options to select a larger wealth management firm that will provide only asset allocation advice at a reduced fee because the individual investor does not need the other services when it comes to tax, legal, and sophisticated financial planning.  I wrote an article several months ago in regard to how you can look at the value added by your financial professional.  It is worth a review in terms of what he/she can do for you that you cannot simply do yourself using a passive investing strategy.  Here is the link:

https://latticeworkwealth.com/2013/10/26/are-your-financial-advisors-fees-reasonable-are-you-actually-adding-more-risk-to-your-ability-to-reach-your-long-term-financial-goals-here-is-a-unique-way-to-look-at-what-clients-pay-for/

I would like to focus on a different way of looking at investment advisory fees.  My primary focus will be on retirees; however, the logic directly applies to those in the wealth accumulation phase of life trying to save for retirement.  As I have mentioned previously, the standard fee for investment advisory services is normally 1% of assets under management (AUM).  This structure simply means that an individual investor pays $1 in fees for every $100 invested.  Another way to look at it is that you will pay $10,000 annually if your account balance is $1,000,000 ($1,000,000 * 1%).  I would like to go through an illustration to show what this means in terms of your investment performance, overall risk profile, and the ability to reach your long-term financial goals.

Most individual investors do not write out a check to their financial professional.  Rather, they have the investment advisory fees paid out of the investment returns in their portfolios.  My example does not make any difference how you pay your fees, but it can be somewhat hidden if you are not writing out a check.  The fees just appear as a line item on your daily activity section of your brokerage statement; most investors skim over it.  In order to make the mathematics easier to follow, I am going to use a retiree with a $1,000,000 account balance and a 1% AUM fee annually.  My entire argument applies no matter what your account balance is or your AUM fee.  You just need to insert your personal account balance and AUM fee which may be higher or lower.  So let’s get started.

In my hypothetical scenario of a $1,000,000 portfolio subject to a 1% AUM fee, this retiree will have to pay $10,000 to his/her financial professional for investment advisory services rendered.  Well, we can look at this fee from the standpoint of the portfolio as a whole in terms of investment performance necessary to pay that fee.  The portfolio will need to increase by at least 1% to pay the fee in full.  Now most financial professionals will tell clients that they can expect to earn 8% per year by investing in stocks.  So using that figure (which is close to the historical average), we can get to the fee by allocating $125,000 of the overall portfolio to stocks in order to increase the portfolio on average by 8% to be able to pay the $10,000 fee ($125,000 * 8% = $10,000).

What does that mean in terms of your overall portfolio allocation to stocks?  You can imagine that, whatever your total allocation to stocks is, 12.5% of that amount is invested simply to pay fees.  For example, if you are just starting out in retirement at age 65 and have 60% allocated to stocks, 12.5% of the expected return (8%) from stocks in your total  portfolio will go to pay your annual investment advisory fees and 47.5% of the expected return (8%) from stocks in your total portfolio will add to your account balance. 

The math works out this way:  $1,000,000 * 60% = $600,000 // $600,000 (invested in stocks) * 8% (expected return from stocks) = $48,000 // $48,000 – $10,000 (AUM fee at 1%) = $38,000.  An alternative way to do the math is to take the total allocation to stocks and subtract the necessary allocation to stocks to pay the AUM fee, and that result is the investment return for the year that remains in your account balance which is $38,000 (So take 60.0% – 12.5% = 47.5% // $1,000,000 * 47.5% * 8% = $38,000).

The paragraph above has major impacts for your portfolio.  Firstly, it illustrates how much additional risk you are taking on in your portfolio as a whole.  In order to breakeven net of fees, you need to invest 12.5% of your portfolio into stocks.  Retirees are in the wealth distribution phase of life, and most are living off the investment account earnings (capital gains, dividends, and interest) and principal.  Since retirees have no income from working and will not be making any additional contributions, they are impacted greater than other investors in the way of volatility.  Stocks are more volatile investments than bonds but offer the promise of higher returns.  It is the simple risk/reward tradeoff.  Second, it shows that the higher the fees for retirees the more vulnerable they are to volatility as a whole.  Since retirees need to withdraw money on a consistent/systematic basis, a higher allocation of their portfolio to riskier investments are more vulnerable than other investors that have longer timeframes prior to retirement (wealth accumulation phase). If there are major downturns in the stock market, retirees still have to withdraw from their accounts in order to pay living expenses.  They do not have the luxury of not selling.  Yes, a retiree could sell bonds instead of stocks but then the allocation of stocks has to rise by definition as a percentage of the entire portfolio.

There is a way to rethink the investment strategy for a retiree.  In today’s investing environment, there are many more investment offerings that offer financial products at much lower expenses than traditional active mutual fund managers.  These include ETFs and index mutual funds.  The expenses typically are less than 0.20% (in fact, most are significantly lower than this).  Additionally, there has been the proliferation of independent Registered Investment Advisors (RIAs) and Certified Financial Planners (CFPs) over the past 10-15 years who charge fee-only (hourly) or flat fee.  Most of these financial professionals charge significantly lower fees than the traditional 1% AUM fee.  In fact, it is possible to cut your fees by 50% at least.  Now the flipside may be that you might not have the ability to consult with some about certain sophisticated tax, legal/estate, and financial planning strategies.  However, most retirees do not need that advice to begin with.  The average retiree only needs a sound asset allocation of his/her investment portfolio given his/her risk tolerance and financial goals.  To learn more about independent RIAs and CFPs, I have included these links:

1)       RIA – http://www.riastandsforyou.com/benefits-of-an-ria.html

 

2)      CFP – http://www.plannersearch.org/why-cfp/Pages/Why-Hire-a-Certified-Financial-Planner.aspx

The main benefit in terms of reducing fees is not only that the retiree keeps more money, but, more importantly, he/she can reduce the overall risk of the portfolio.  Let’s go back to our hypothetical example of a retiree with a $1,000,000 who is charged a 1% AUM fee or $10,000 per year.  If the total investment advisory fees are reduced by 50%, the total annual fee is 0.5% or $5,000 per year.  What does this mean?  In our first example, the retiree had to allocate 12.5% of his/her portfolio of stocks to pay the $10,000 annual AUM fee (assuming an 8% expected return).  If the fees are 50% less, the retiree now only has to allocate 6.25% of the portfolio to stocks in order to pay the annual investment advisory fees ($1,000,000 * 6.25% = $62,500 // $62,500 * 8% = $5,000).

Now if we go back to the longer example of a simple 60% stock and 40% bond portfolio, the retiree in this case is able to invest 53.75% in stocks and 46.25% in bonds and still pay the annual investment advisory fees.  The math is as follows:  ($1,000,000 * 53.75% = $537,500 // $537,500 * 8% = $43,000 // $43,000 – $5,000 new annual fees = $38,000).  You will note that the retiree has $38,000 in his/her portfolio after the annual fees are paid out.  This dollar amount is equal to the other hypothetical retiree who had to pay a 1% AUM fee.  The example illustrates that both investors have the same expected increase to their portfolio but the retiree with the lower fees is able to get to that figure with a portfolio that is less risky because he/she is able to allocate 6.25% less to stocks.

Another way to look at this scenario is that the retiree in the second case with 50% lower fees could have alternatively chosen to reduce his/her stock allocation by 5%.  For example, the retiree could have started with a portfolio allocation of 55% instead of using the 53.75% stock allocation.  In this example, the retiree would have an expected return after fees that is $1,000 higher than the retiree from the first example and take less risk.  The math is as follows:  ($1,000,000 * 55% = $550,000 // $550,000 * 8% = $44,000 // $44,000 – $5,000 = $39,000 // $39,000 – $38,000 = $1,000).  The retiree in this example would have a higher expected return from his/her entire portfolio of 0.1%.  While this figure might not sound like much, the more important point is that this return is achieved with less risk (only 55% allocation to stocks versus a 60% allocation to stocks).

A financial professional might argue that he/she is able to create an asset allocation model for an average retiree that will end up having investment returns higher than that recommended by the independent RIA or CFP.  Of course, this might be the case.  However, in order to have the retiree be indifferent between the two scenarios, the portfolio recommended by the financial professional charging a 1% AUM fee must be able to return 0.5% more annually at an absolute minimum.  Now this does not even consider the riskiness of the retiree’s portfolio.  In order to have a portfolio earn an additional 0.5% per year, the client will have to accept investing in riskier asset classes.  Therefore, given the additional risk, the retiree should require even more than an additional 0.5% overall return to compensate him/her for the potential for higher volatility.

As you can see, the level of fees makes a big difference.  The more you are able to cut the fees on your retirement account (and any account for that matter) the less risky your portfolio can be positioned.  In the aforementioned example, the overall reduction in the exposure to stocks can be a maximum of 12.5% to stocks.  Now the average retiree will most likely not want to forgo any investment advice from a financial professional.  However, in the case of person able to lower his/her investment fees by 50%, he/she was able to reduce his/her investments in stocks by 6.25% (12.5% * 50%).  In fact, you can figure out the possible reduction in exposure to stocks by multiplying the 12.5% by the reduction in fees you are able to achieve.  For example, let’s say that you are able to reduce your investment fees by 70%.  You would be able to reduce your allocation to stocks by 8.7% (12.5% * 70%).

The entire point of this article is to show you how you can be able to reduce the volatility in your portfolio and not sacrifice overall investment returns.  If investing in stocks during your retirement years makes you nervous, this methodology can be used to help you sleep better at night because you have less total money of your entire retirement savings allocated to stocks.  However, you are not sacrificing investment returns.  Always remember that in the world of investment advisory fees, it truly is a “zero sum game”.  All this means is that the investment advisory fees are reducing your net investment portfolio gains.  The gain in the value of your portfolio either goes to you or your financial professional.  The more you learn about how investment advisory fees, the types of financial professionals available to advise you offering different fee schedules, and how the financial markets work, the more gains you will keep in your portfolio.

The Results are in for my January CNBC Experiment: It Proves Nothing and Everything. What?

07 Friday Feb 2014

Posted by in asset allocation, beta, bonds, business, Consumer Finance, currency, Education, EM, emerging markets, Fed, Fed Taper, Fed Tapering, Federal Reserve, finance, financial planning, foreign currency, forex, fx, Individual Investing, interest rates, investing, investments, math, NailedIt, personal finance, portfolio, rising interest rate environment, rising interest rates, risk, statistics, stock prices, stocks, Suitability, volatility, Yellen

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Sometimes the most important lessons in the individual investing sphere are complicated and simple at the same time.  At the very beginning of January, I recommended a little experiment that related to the financial market coverage on CNBC.  The specific details of this “thought experiment” can be found in the original blog post from January 1st:

https://latticeworkwealth.com/2014/01/14/happy-new-year-beginning-thoughts-and-information-for-international-viewers-2/

The brief version of the exercise related to watching Monday and Friday coverage of the current events in the global financial markets during the month.  The simple exercise was to watch CNBC’s Squwak Box every Monday during the course of the month.  The second part was to watch the last hour of the Closing Bell segment.  What was the logic?  The Monday show is a three-hour program, and there are many current issues considered and opinions from various market participants (e.g. traders, money managers, economists, investment strategists, research analysts, etc.).  Monday is critical due to the fact that the market participants cannot trade on Saturday and Sunday.  You might think of it as “forced” time to think and/or reflect about how current events are affecting investment opportunities and risks.  Friday’s reflections from the same market participants is focused more on trying to explain the “vagaries and vicissitudes” (i.e. volatility of the stock market and changing opinions) of the markets ups and downs over the course of the week.  Furthermore, many commentators and guests try to explain why the predictions on Monday did not or did match up with the ideas expressed at the beginning of the week.

The overall point of this experiment was to “drive home” the fact that trying to time the market or predict its direction over the short term is extremely challenging and can seem hopeless.  Toward the end of December, the general investment thesis for the majority of money managers was that the stock market was poised to have a very positive January due to the fact that the financial markets did not really dive after the Federal Reserve announced the reduction of the tapering program, commonly referred to as QE (quantitative easing).  Additionally, the main belief was that bonds were one of the least attractive investments to own.  Most people assumed that the 10-year US Treasury Note was headed up to the 3.0% level.  Things seemed pretty simple and not too many headwinds in the near future.  So what happened during January?

The main event that most people remember was the currency difficulties of a number of emerging market countries.  The financial media focused a lot on the Turkish lira (TRY) and the Argentine peso (ARS).  Turkey had political problems, and Argentina has a huge problem as it relates to political leadership (or the absence thereof) and dwindling currency reserves.  There were other currencies that experienced trouble as well like the South African rand (ZAR).  The other important development was that the Japanese yen (JPY) reversed its direction and strengthen versus the US dollar (USD).  Oddly enough, the Argentine Merval stock index was one of the best performers over the course of the month.  No one saw this coming to such an extent.  You might term this an exogenous event as anything that occurs outside of your current model to build a portfolio or invest in individual stocks/bonds.  It is largely unknown and hard to predict.  (As an aside, this is NOT the same thing as a “black swan”.  That term is overused and conflated with many other things.  Refer to Dr. Nassim Taleb for a further definition of the termed that he famously coined years ago).  These events tend to be unknowns and have a greater impact because the general level of the perception of risk changes almost instantly and affect market sentiment and momentum.  Market participants need to alter their models rather quickly in order to account for the occurrence of these events.

The other big event was the movement of the yield on the 10-year US Treasury note.  Instead of following a general path of rising, the interest rate actually fell.  The yield on this instrument drifted down roughly 40 basis points (0.4%) from the 3.0% level.  What most people fail to realize is that interest rates go down if economic data turns out to be worse than expected normally (e.g. December jobs of 70,000 and the lowest labor force participation rate since the 1980s), but, more importantly, there is a “flight to quality” phenomenon that occurs over and over again.  There tends to be a bit of a “mini panic” when unexpected and impactful events occur.  If all else fails, institutional investors like hedge fund managers tend to buy US Treasury bills, notes, and bonds for safety.  The additional demand causes bond prices to go up and, by definition, yields will go down.

The combination of bad economic data and dealing with the currency woes in the emerging markets causes many short-term traders and speculators to buy these risk-free assets and figure out how to trade later.  It is sort of an example of reflexivity.  The bottom line for individual investors is that many sold bonds and purchased dividend stocks instead.  The exact opposite happened:  bond yields went down and dividend stocks sold off.  The worst short-term investing strategy was to search for yield in the stock market rather than the bond market due to rising interest rates.  For more information you can refer to one of my former posts on how to look at the various risk factors associated with bonds.  Trust me, there is a lot more to bonds than simply interest rate risk.  Here is the link to a former blog post that addresses this very issue:

https://latticeworkwealth.com/2014/01/02/a-bond-is-a-bond-is-a-bond-right-should-you-sell-bonds-to-buy-stocks/

There were many other smaller events that happened over the course of the month that affected the general volatility experience in the financial markets.  At the end of the day, even the “experts” had a monumental task trying to explain all the macroeconomic events, currency movements, and interest rate implications throughout January.  If the task was so difficult for them, it is normally advisable for individual investors to not follow the market daily and get caught up in temporary “greed and fear” of traders and speculators.  Investment ideas and predications can change from day to day and even minute to minute in the short term.  It is much more important for individual investors to develop a long-term financial plan that will allow them to reach future financial goals.  You then blend that with your risk tolerance.  For example, how likely would you have been to sell the positions in your portfolio given the volatility experienced during the course of January?  An outlook of five years is normally a great start for that plan.  If you look out into the future with a longer timeframe like an annual basis in terms of adjusting the components of your asset allocation, you are less likely to constantly trade the securities in your personal portfolio.  The frenetic pace of traders/speculators and the volatility of the stock and bonds markets makes it seem that you MUST do something, anything!

If you would like to learn a bit more about behavioral finance, you can refer to this blog post from last year (note context of examples referred to is from August 2013 when the piece was published):

https://latticeworkwealth.com/2013/08/04/todays-news-should-prompt-you-to-adjust-your-entire-investment-portfolio/

One of the most important things to learn in investing is how to control your emotions.  It is easy to map out your investment strategy and risk tolerance on paper.  Many asset managers who have experienced a multitude of secular bull and bear markets refer to this phenomenon as your EQ versus your IQ.  Thus, when actual “money” is involved, volatility and uncertainty in the financial markets brings forth challenges that even the best money managers have a hard time keeping up their nerve.  The other takeaway is that people’s investment recommendations can change on a dime.  Market participants can be very hopeful on one day and think the sky is falling the next day.  Trying to time the market is so difficult that you end up developing a portfolio allocation for your investments that assumes that general events with transpire.  All the planning in the world cannot account for all possibilities of geopolitical and global events that might really cause the market to go down more than normal in a short time period.

The whole point of this “thought experiment” was to encourage you to take a long-term view of investing in the financial markets.  It is a lot less stressful, less complicated, and tends to lead to better overall investment returns (i.e. you do not “sell low and buy high” as much because everyone tells you to).  For more information on stepping back and thinking about the long term, I have included a final blog post.  You always need to remember that your financial professional (or yourself if you manage your own investments) who advises you about investment decisions is forever impacted by the start of their investment career.  They tend to be biased and make investment recommendations based upon how things used to be when they started in the business.  It is very hard to separate your “biases” from the present day.  Here is the link:

https://latticeworkwealth.com/2013/08/18/before-you-take-any-investment-advice-consider-the-source/

Well, I hope you learned a few things by participating in my experiment and maybe even had a little bit of fun.  Please feel free to leave a comment or send me an email directly at latticeworkwealth@gmail.com with more specific feedback and/or questions.  Sometimes you can learn a great deal just by being an observer of financial market volatility.  What is the nothing part of this learning journey?  The moral of the story is that everyday guests appearing on CNBC or other commentators will let you know that the stock market with either go up, go down, or stay unchanged.  Obviously everyone knows that simple concept to begin with.  Thus, it is hard to choose who to listen too because of so many divergent opinions.  Lastly, you should realize that this same experiment would have worked with the other business networks and large financial news publications like the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Barron’s.