Bonds

When’s the Next Market Crash?

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Full disclosure, I don’t know, but don’t stop reading! The thing is, that’s a bad question, or at least the wrong question. No one knows when the next market crash will be. We’re pretty sure there will be another one at some point because that’s how the market works, but instead of trying to figure out when, let’s work from what we know:

1) We know that the market moves based on new news and people’s emotions. Neither of those things are predictable in the future. We don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, what news will come out. And we especially don’t know how people will feel or how they’ll respond to unknown things in the future. So, we know that we don’t know what the market will do tomorrow or anytime in the future. Make sense?

2) We know that the general stint of the market is up, way up. We know that for people who don’t freak out about the next crash, who instead stay invested through the bumps, the average returns are really amazing (to the tune of 10+% per year!). 

3) We know that when the market does crash it takes an average of about 4 months for it to bounce all the way back. The average crash takes about 4 months to hit the bottom, and 4 months to come back. For those keeping track, that’s a total of 8 months for the average crash. 

4) We know that over the last 93 years (that’s as far back as the super-reliable data goes), 68 of them were positive by an average of 21%. That leaves 25 negative years, which were down by an average of 13%. Who doesn’t want to sign up for those odds!

5) We know that people get real nervous about the market. On average, people jump advisors and funds every 3.5 years. And we know that’s not a winning strategy. 

6) We know that bonds are much less volatile than stocks, but that they also return significantly less than stocks. So, when you’re young, you want to own mostly stocks. You want your money to grow, and crashes don’t matter too much because you’ve got plenty of time to let the market bounce back. If you’re older, you might need more of your money in bonds because the bonds won’t dip like the stocks will in a crash. Bonds can reduce the volatility in your portfolio when you need the funds to be there.

7) We know that good advisors have a profound impact on people’s returns. Instead of encouraging clients to try to figure out when or what is going to happen next, they help clients stick to the plan, even when the market seems scary. 

So we don’t know when the next crash will be. But it actually doesn’t matter, not if you have a good advisor, a good understanding of the market, and a good plan. The timing of next market crash should actually be the least of your worries; but if you must worry, at least worry about something a little more worrisome. 

Be Wary of Investing Apps

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Investing today is easier than it’s ever been. One hundred years ago investing options were limited, there were no mutual funds, no ETFs, it was basically banks and single stocks. And even those few options were expensive and difficult to obtain. For most people, investing wasn’t a viable option. Today we’re drowning in all the investment options. It’s become so easy, so normal, you can download an app and own thousands of equities within minutes. The ease is good, and it’s good that more people are able to own equities (equities are the best passive wealth building tool in history) but there are also good and bad ways to own equities, and the ease seems to more often promote the bad ways.

Active investing is essentially gambling, even for professionals. We know the stock market moves relative to news and emotion, neither of which is consistently predictable. We also know that the current price of a stock is the best indication of its current value, stocks aren’t ever ‘on sale’ or ‘overpriced.’ So when an active investor buys or sells a stock share it’s just a bet, a bet that a specific company will either increase in value (in which case you’d buy) or decrease in value (in which case you’d sell). Successfully buying and selling stocks is tough, and no one can consistently do it well enough to beat the market over time, not even professionals. Research shows that the outcome of this active investing style is overwhelmingly negative. That’s part of the reason why we’ve seen a seismic shift toward more passive investment strategies over the last 20 years.

However, we’ve also seen the growth of in-app investing. I’m all for cool apps, and investing apps are among the coolest, but there’s an inherent problem in using an app as an envoy for your retirement. The fact that they are so easy to use is a temptation to actively use them. The fact that they look so nice gives the illusion that we’re doing something responsible with our money. Some offer worthless, even contradictory, commentary on market predictions. Some even promote super risky options (puts and calls) accompanied by incomplete (at best) information concerning the risk involved, and even how they work. Essentially, these apps promote a sort of sophisticated gambling, which is really fun, and really bad for your return probabilities. Apps that have claimed to stand for passive investing seem to be slowly moving toward an active style as well or at least offering it.

It’s probably best to treat investing apps like gambling apps since that’s effectively what they are. Don’t be duped by the bells and whistles, they offer an adrenaline rush and a lot of downsides. Most of us wouldn’t take our retirement fund over to the roulette table and put it all on red (talk about a rush!), so don’t dump your life savings into an app.

Finances by age

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We’ve all heard of general financial guidelines which wisdom would suggest we follow. Dave Ramsey talks about them, financial planners use them, we all interact with them on some level. As you move through life the guidelines also move a little bit, some things you didn’t have to deal with in your 20’s become pressing in your 40’s, and vice versa. This is a breakdown of these financial guidelines by age, things that you should be thinking about based on your stage of life. This does not mean that you’ve failed if you’re working on some 20’s things in your 30’s or 40’s, or even 50’s. But these guidelines are a helpful measuring stick to see how you’re doing currently, and they provide a good pathway for lifetime financial success. Let’s dig in.

Teen years:

  • The number one thing you can do in your teens is to start developing good financial habits.
  • Stay away from consumer debt. These debts are often subject to high interest rates (credit cards), tied to depreciating assets (cars), and often end up funding things that are unnecessary. They encourage bad spending habits and can cost years to catch up from.
  • Learn to save money. Instead of unnecessary spending, practice going the other way, save up money for things you want. 
  • Learn to work hard. Financial guidelines will certainly help you succeed, but you won’t get far if you can’t earn money. 
  • Get through college with minimal student loans.


20’s:

  • Now you’re out of college and real life is set in. The number one thing you can do is create a zero-sum budget and stick to it as if your life depends on it. Give yourself some spending money, make sure to budget your savings, and again, avoid consumer debt. The budget is not a forecast of your future spending, and it’s not just for tracking your spending either, it’s for planning your spending. You intentionally decide what you’re going to spend money on and how much, and you don’t spend beyond that. 
  • Start a financial plan. Meet with an advisor, learn about how the market works, and start putting together a loose plan for retirement. Things will obviously change, but the plan will ensure that you’re pointed in the right direction.
  • Create an emergency fund. Dave Ramsey says save $1,000, that’s a good place to start. Eventually, you might work up to a month or two worth of expenses. This is how you will pay for life’s curveballs instead of using your credit card.
  • If your company offers a 401k plan, start putting some money away. The money you invest in your 20’s will work the hardest for you over the long haul. If your company’s 401k plan offers some sort of match, try to contribute whatever is required to take full advantage of the match. The free money is hard to pass up.
  • Be aggressive about paying off student loans (and any other consumer debts).
  • Start saving for a house.


30’s & 40’s:

  • Now that you’ve set the stage in your 20’s, you’re ready to start executing in your 30’s and 40’s. Keep meeting with your advisor and updating the plan, keep learning, and keep on the straight and narrow.
  • Become debt free (aside from a potential mortgage loan). If you have any consumer debt or student loans, be aggressive about paying them off.
  • Think about buying a house. Your financial plan will show you that buying a house is the most cost-effective way to provide housing, a home is a good asset. Save up a large down payment and ensure the payment fits nicely in the budget, there are few things more financially stressful than being ‘house-poor.’
  • Make a plan to pay off the house, ideally in 15 years or less. Owning a home free and clear is one of the most impactful things you can do for your retirement. It’s also a great way to help kids through college if that’s a goal of yours.
  • Increase retirement savings. You’ve been contributing enough to take advantage of the match, but there’s no need to stop there. Bump up your 401k percentage or put some extra money away in an IRA. 15% of your income is a good goal.
  • Buy some term life insurance, especially if you have children. A 20-year policy is often sufficient, the goal is to ensure that your family will be well-off in the event of a tragedy.
  • Put together a will, again, especially if you have children. It’s another way to ensure the family will be well-off in the event of a tragedy.
  • Increase the emergency fund to cover 3-6 months (or whatever number feels most comfortable) worth of expenses. Think about this money as insurance. It’s not going to earn much if anything, but that’s not what it’s for. The investments will earn money for retirement, the insurance is to shield you from unforeseen events.

50’s:

  • Talk to your advisor about your investment allocations. As you move closer to retirement, you’ll want to ensure the retirement funds will be available for you, which means you’ll probably scale back the risk factor in your portfolio, or at least have a plan in place to do so. This means owning a higher percentage of bonds and fixed income type assets and fewer equities (stocks). A good advisor will engage with you on this subject pro-actively.
  • Adjust investment contributions. It could be a good time to increase savings again to maximize what will be available in retirement. It’s the home stretch!
  • Pay off your home. I mentioned this earlier, but paying off your home is one of the most significant things you can do for your retirement. From a cash-flow perspective, it makes a ton of sense. If you owe $100,000 on your mortgage, and your payment is $750 per month, you’ll gain $9,000 in spendable cash-flow per year for spending by paying the $100,000. If you instead saved that $100,000, you would be able to pull about 5-6% per year ($5,000-$6,000) and you’d still be making the mortgage payment. A mortgage-free budget will also be much more flexible. Many people end up working in retirement mainly because they still have to cover the mortgage.
  • Look at your social security estimate. This is available online (https://www.ssa.gov/benefits/retirement/estimator.html) and will be helpful as you get more detailed in your retirement plan.


60’s+:

  • Finalize your retirement plan. Determine when you’ll retire, what your new income sources will look like, how your advisor will manage the retirement funds, when to take social security, all the exciting stuff. These are important details to nail down as you move into retirement.
  • Revisit your budget. Income, expenses, taxes, and cash-flow all change significantly in retirement. A good comparative cash-flow analysis from your advisor could prove very helpful. Usually, retirees can achieve a similar or better cash-flow with significantly less income because of how the taxes and expenses shape up (especially if that mortgage is gone!).
  • Decide what you’d like to accomplish in retirement, maybe even set some goals. The great benefit of retirement is not the ability to stop doing anything, it’s the opportunity to focus on the things you want to do. A part-time job or some sort of enjoyable work, more family time, travel with loved ones, important hobbies, these all can be part of a richly fulfilling retirement; but don’t let them simply happen to you, do them on purpose.

Pay attention to asset classes, not returns

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When people think about deciding between investment advisors, or mutual funds, or even stocks, the temptation is to look at past performance. That’s the default. And it seems basic, you’re looking for returns, what else would you look at? What else could you even look at?

The problem is the past performance we see is short term. You’ll see three to five year histories on your account statements, Morningstar defaults at a ten year history (if the fund has been around that long), and the news rarely talks about anything further back than the last year. Those are relatively short periods of time, especially when we’re talking about market returns. Instead of comparing past performance in advisors and mutual funds over the past ten years, we should be looking at long-term historical returns of asset classes.

An asset class is a group of similar securities that tend to move together. The main general asset classes are equities (stocks), fixed income (bonds), and cash. Each of these, but especially the equities group, can be broken down further. In equities, we see large vs small, value vs growth, U.S. vs international. For an example, a very popular asset class is U.S. Large Growth, which is basically the S&P 500. We have returns data on these asset classes all the way back to the early 20th century. That information can tell us much more than the past ten years. We can see which asset classes tend to outperform others, we can see how the different asset classes correlate to each other, and we can know what returns and risk a fund or portfolio can expect over long periods of time. A ten-year history of returns is almost irrelevant. Over ten years any asset class could outperform any other, but we don’t know when or which. So to look backward at the performance of a fund is not only unhelpful, it’s more often hurtful. A good ten-year history on a fund, or even an asset class, deceives us into thinking the performance will continue in the future. The short-term history the only information we know to use, and besides that, it seems to make sense. But that’s the opposite of a good investing strategy. Instead, let’s analyze the asset class data going back as far as it goes, understand where returns come from, and diversify our portfolio’s in a way that’s consistent with the data. Then we let the market perform and deliver results. Our balanced diversified portfolio won’t always be the big winner year by year, but over the long haul, it will outperform anyone trying to predict market movements based on ten-year histories, or any other material information.

Part 3: The Three-Factor Model

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The Three-Factor Model was introduced by Eugene Fama and Ken French in 1991. You might remember Fama from Part 1, he is also responsible for the Efficient Market Hypothesis back in the 1960s. The Three-Factor Model is a sort of subset theory to Modern Portfolio Theory, it takes things a step further. In Modern Portfolio Theory (Part 2) we see that strategic diversification is important for successful investing, The Three-Factor Model deals with the ‘strategic’ part of diversification. This research is very important for constructing portfolios. It means that you don’t want to simply owns lots of different asset classes, you want to own the right amount of the right asset classes to increase returns at minimal risk (volatility). As you might have guessed, there are three factors:

  1. Stocks outperform bonds (market effect). We want to be in the stock market. Bonds are good as you get closer to retiring because they’re not as volatile, but stocks will give the long-term returns that will allow for you to retire in the first place.
  2. Small companies outperform large companies (size effect). Large companies are the popular investment. We hear about the S&P 500, Dow Jones, and Nasdaq in the news almost exclusively; they’re all measurements of the largest US companies. Large companies are cheap to own, easy to trade, and you’ve heard of many of them, they make for a very popular investment. But over time, small companies will give you better returns. An ideal portfolio will not only include small companies, but it will also lean towards them.
  3. Value companies outperform growth companies (value effect). ‘Value’ means that the stock of a company is valued more closely to the actual worth of its assets. The stocks don’t have a built-in premium for growth potential because the companies aren’t expected to grow much. The stock prices of growth companies are much higher than the actual value of the company’s assets because of their potential, their expected growth. They’re also more popular than value companies, examples include Apple and Amazon and Google. Over time, value companies will give a better return than growth companies. Again, an ideal portfolio will not only include value companies, but it will also lean towards them.

The point of all this research is to help construct a better portfolio. Investing is not a shot in the dark or a gut feeling. It’s not even an educated guess about which asset classes or companies will make a jump next year. Investing is an academic exercise. We put these pieces of research together to model a portfolio that will put investors in the best position to capture market returns next year, and the year after, and every year moving forward. There are no pretensions that we know what will happen next year, we simply stay disciplined and diversified, we follow the rules, and we let the market do its work.