Ideally, we should all just time the market cycles and only buy when the market is low and sell when the market is high. Unfortunately, few, if any investors are able to do this with any consistency.
We tend to make our investment decisions based on recent past events and how we feel about those events.
If the market has done well lately, we wish, we are comfortable buying stocks. If the market has done poorly, however, we avoid them. Unfortunately, this is the exact opposite of what we should do if our goal is to maximize our long term return. Once we feel “comfortable” with the market, we have usually already passed up large potential gains. The stock market is forward looking and usually starts trending upwards between 6 to 9 months ahead of the economy actually recovering from a down cycle.
Remember, Warren Buffet is a buyer and NOT a seller.
There is an unholy alliance between the media and the large financial institutions to convince the investing public to continue trading by spreading fear and panic. The large financial institutions make money when you trade in and out, making money on every trade. The media encourages sensationalism because it sells advertising. You should own equities…globally diversify…rebalance and believe that America and the capital markets will recover. We as a country have been thru much worse and we recovered and became stronger.
Not all sectors of the economy will recover or come back to where they were prior to 2008. Other sectors will recover quickly and new sectors will emerge and thrive. The problem is no one can consistently predict what will happen and when.
Related articles
- The Future of the Stock Market May Depend on This Company (community.tradeking.com)
- Correlation is back (with a vengence) (ftalphaville.ft.com)
- With default looming, what investors should do now (seattlepi.com)
