Requirement 3: Coaching.
Success in investing, just like success in many other things, requires the help of a coach. The stock market is the greatest passive wealth creation tool in existence, but it’s not a cakewalk to navigate. Successful investing requires knowledge of the market and an unwavering dedication to the right investing philosophy. When the market turns downward, which it has and will again, most people freak out and make serious mistakes with their investments. Investor stats from the 2008 crash are astoundingly bad. Billions of dollars fled the market at effectively the worst time to get out (at or near the bottom). It was the second crash the S&P 500 had suffered within the decade and people were understandably scared and pessimistic. This is where a coach helps. A coach will help you gain an understanding of the market (so you won’t have to stress about the downturns), but more importantly will help you maintain your investing discipline (so even when you do feel stressed, you won’t make a big mistake). When most investors are panicking, a coach will keep you on track.
A good coach is the most important facet of stress-free investing. They help by educating clients to an understanding of the market, they help by providing a great portfolio, and they help clients actually obtain the market returns and outcomes they’re looking for. A good coach will allow clients to focus on their purpose instead of stressing about how their money is doing in the market.
Stress-free investing involves an understanding of the market. Not an understanding of what the market will do in the next 10 minutes, or next 10 days, or next 10 months, that would require psychic abilities which is unfortunately unrealistic, but a real understanding of how the market works and what you can and should expect from the market.
Two main points here:
The market is unpredictable. Prices already reflect all of the knowable information, the market moves based on future information. Since no one knows the future no one knows how the market will move in the future, despite what some financial professionals may have you believe. The misnomer that you or the professional you’re working with must have some insight into the future movements of the market is the cause of a lot of stress by itself. Thankfully, stress-free investing doesn’t require clairvoyance.
The market is volatile but it trends upward. The volatility makes the market feel dangerous. People generally believe that they could lose most or all of their money in a market downturn (talk about stressful!). But the truth is that markets trend upwards, and over long periods of time (10+ years) the market is always up, despite whatever crashes it may have endured (including the Great Depression and the 2008 housing crash). If you’re invested well (which we’ll get to in part 2), you don’t have to worry about the market destroying your savings! You just have to ride out the dips and enjoy the long-term, upward trend. The market is only dangerous if you try to bet and predict it, it becomes your friend when you focus on owning it.
Last week Wednesday (the 14th) was a bad day, at least it was a bad day for the markets. I actually had a pretty nice day, maybe you did too. The market took a hit though, the DOW was down 800 points (about 3%), its worst day of this year, and other indexes didn’t fare much better. The chatter is heating up, the next recession is on the horizon! But is it?
Well, the Wall Street Journal certainly seems to think so. In an article title Stocks losses deepen as a key recession warning surfaces published last week, the WSJ espouses the fearful sentiment pervading the industry last week. A few quotes:
Whether the events presage an economic calamity or just an alarming spasm are unclear. But unlike during the Great Recession, global leaders are not working in unison to confront mounting problems and arrest the slowdown. Instead, they are increasingly at one another’s throats.
This sounds especially bad. At least in 2008 people were trying to fix the problem!
“The stars are aligned across the curve that the economy is headed for a big fall,” said Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at MUFG Union Bank. “The yield curves are all crying timber that a recession is almost a reality, and investors are tripping over themselves to get out of the way.”
Yikes, sounds like someone is about to get trampled.
The U.S. economy has shown signs of weakening in recent months, but high levels of consumer spending in the United States have helped enormously. Still, the escalating trade war between Trump and Chinese leaders has stopped many businesses from investing. And there are signs that the large tariffs he has placed on many Chinese imports is costing U.S. businesses and consumers billions of dollars.
If this isn’t a rollercoaster of emotion I don’t what is. Signs of weakening? Oh no! High levels of consumer spending? Okay, so not too bad. Tariffs are costing U.S. business and consumer billions? Run from the market!
I kid, but this is actually serious stuff. The WSJ is only one among many news outlets forecasting the next crash. The problem is, no one knows when the next crash will be, regardless of ‘key recession warning’ claims, because the market moves on new news and information, things that no one knows. Unless of course, you know the future.
Instead of tuning into the cycle, remember that great returns don’t come from any ability to time the next crash. The market recesses sometimes, and it could be contracting now, or next year, or in five years. We don’t knowwhen,we just know that’s how the market works. The disciplined investor who has a plan for whenever the next crash comes and a coach to get them through it will always win.
Market timing is the practice of moving money in and out of the market, or in and out of specific sectors of the market, based on a belief that the market, or specific sectors of the market, will do well (in which case you’d be in) or poorly (in which case you’d pull out) in the future. If you’ve read about stock picking, market timing might sound familiar. Market timing is similar because it’s also built on a false premise that the market is inefficient, but it’s also a little bit different. Market timing is more subtle than stock picking. Instead of a belief that you can buy underpriced stocks and sell overpriced stocks, market timing is a larger bet on the future of entire market sectors. It gives the allusion that you can simultaneously be well-diversified and engage in market timing since you might always own a few different asset classes. It’s sort of like stock picking in disguise (it’s often called ‘tactical asset allocation’ which sounds super smart) because it’s essentially picking market sectors (asset classes) instead of stocks. Market timing can seem more legitimate than stock picking, but it’s still essentially gambling.
Market timing is unfortunately just as pervasive in the investing world as stock picking. It is often incited by panic, people move their money around or out when the market seems especially scary and move it back again (or not) when the market feels more safe. The timing tends to be exactly opposite of what should be done, people end up selling low and buying high and sacrificing millions of dollars in returns. But damage is done apart from panic too. Dalbar (an investor research company) reports that the average equity (stock) fund investor stays invested in their funds for only 4 years before jumping to a different set of funds, perhaps unintentionally market timing. Money managers routinely shift strategies within popular mutual funds (referred to style drift), shifting focus between market sectors. Pundits constantly discuss market trends which include market timing suggestions. Similar to stock picking, we’re so immune to market timing that it just sounds like normal investing at this point. That’s bad, here are a few reasons why:
1) People are bad at market timing. A study by William Sharpe conducted in 1975 (Likely Gains from Market Timing) concluded that in order for a market timer to beat a passive fund they would have to guess right about 74% of the time. An update to the study by SEI Corporation in 1992 concluded that the market timer would have to guess right at least 69% of the time, and sometimes as high as 91% of the time in order to beat a similarly invested passive fund. So the important question is: does anyone guess right with that frequency? Maybe you’ve made your own guess by this point, the answer is a resounding no. CXO Advisory did a fascinating study on the success ratios of market timers between 2005 and 2012. They looked at 68 ‘experts’ who made a total of 6,582 predictions during that period. The average accuracy of all predictions? 46.9%, well short of the minimum 69% threshold. These predictions sell news subscriptions and online adds, but they’re detrimental to investor returns.
2) Market timers miss out on returns. Trends are a big topic in the world of investing. Market timers analyze previous trends, they track current trends, and they look for the next trend, it’s incessant. Nejat Seyhun in a 1994 study entitled “Stock Market Extremes and Portfolio Performance” analyzed the period between 1963 and 1993 (a total of 7,802 trading days) and found that only 90 of the days were responsible for 95% of the positive returns. That’s about 3 days per year on average where 95% of returns came from. In all the misguided ‘trends’ talk and the popular practice of moving money in and out and all around, market timers routinely miss the most rewarding days in the market. Instead of focusing on market trends, investors would do much better to focus on the whole market and ride the general stint of the market upwards.
3) Market timers misunderstand the market. The most culpable cause of market timing is panic. People do crazy things when they’re scared and their money is on the line. Don’t get me wrong, the stock market can seem pretty scary, and it definitely involves money, but just because it seems scary doesn’t mean you should be scared. The average market crash of 10% or more lasts just under 8 months, 4 months until it hits the bottom, and just under 4 months to return to the pre-crash high. That’s not so scary. Over the last 93 years (going back as far as we have super-reliable data) 68 years were positive by an average of 21%, 25 years were negative by an average of 13%. Also not so scary. There are 45 countries in the world with free markets and the ability to buy and sell stocks and over 17,000 companies to invest in. What would it take for a well diversified portfolio to lose everything? Only some type of global apocalyptical event, at which point you probably wouldn’t be concerned with the amount of money in your portfolio. That is scary but not because of the market, it’s actually pretty reassuring as far as your portfolio is concerned. Instead of panicking, investors would do much better to rebalance during turbulent markets and capture returns on the way back up.
So market timing is a losing game. It can’t provide any consistent value to a portfolio, it actually causes a drag on returns, and it’s often driven by an inaccurate understanding of the market. Unfortunately it’s prevalent, and many portfolios engage in market timing while investors remain unaware. So take a look, have an advisor do an analysis for you. It pays to understand how you’re invested and to avoid market timing in your portfolio.
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.
Joshua VanDyke Advisor 