As I sit at home, I have PLENTY of time to reflect. I listen to many investors right now and most want to sell out and wait for things to settle down. When the coronavirus crisis ends, I will get back in. But if history tells us anything is that this is market timing. And market timing does not work. You need to know when to get out and when to get back in.

Many tell me that it is different this time. My question is why do we call crashes of the past as buying opportunities and current/future crashes as risk?

Successful investing to many investors is finding the right portfolio that will experience no losses.

Successful investing is not, per se, a portfolio problem, but rather a people problem. No matter how well designed and engineered a portfolio is, it can easily be destroyed by imprudent investor behavior.

Unfortunately, the true enemy of every investor lies within.

The instincts, emotions, and even biochemical makeup of human beings drives them to gamble and speculate with their money, even when they don’t mean to. This problem is multiplied exponentially by financial institutions that profit from this self-destructive cycle. You will see that this cycle is hard wired into every human being in the world. No one is exempt.

 After studying the collective behavior of thousands of real world investors over the past decade, several truths have made themselves clear. It is my belief that many, if not most financial product sponsors are aware of this dilemma,

but either don’t care that the investor is harmed by it,

or are ignorant of the damage that they unknowingly perpetrate on the American investor.

To succeed in investing you must own equities……globally diversify….rebalance.

You need to fire your broker/agent and hire an investor coach/fiduciary adviser.

With help of your investor coach you will build a prudent portfolio at the right amount of risk for you. Your coach will then work with you to remain disciplined during both down markets as well as markets are surging up.

Don’t empower the Wall Street bullies but rather follow an academically researched strategy with the help of an investor coach/ fiduciary adviser.