How To Invest When Stocks Are High

Posted On November 3, 2024 By Scott Stratton, CFP(R), CFA In Financial Planning / No Comments

More investors should be asking about how to invest when stocks are high. The first three quarters of 2024 were the best for the S&P 500 Index since 1997. But what is the outlook going forward for investors?

In a new paper by Goldman Sachs, they project that the return of the S&P 500 Index for the next 10 years, 2024-2034, will be only 3%. How did they reach this dismal projection? The model considers projected earnings growth, current valuations, interest rates, likely recessions, and stock market concentration.

How bad is it?

The return would be in the worst 7% of 10-year returns since 1930.
There is a 72% chance that the S&P 500 will do worse than a 10-year Treasury Bond.
While their median projection is 3%, the 95% confidence range is between -1 and +7%.

The projections from Goldman are quite similar to the analysis from Vanguard. Currently, the Vanguard Capital Markets Model has a 10-year projection of 4.2% for US stocks. Both projections are very alarming, a far cry from the 11% annualized returns of the S&P 500 over the long-term.

Which Projections Matter?

In the short-term, markets are really impossible to predict. Long-term investors should not make portfolio decisions based on short-term projections. I remember one firm said there was a 100% chance of a recession in 2023. But it never happened. Short-Term predictions can be wrong and there are too many variables and surprises to consider. No one has a crystal ball and short-term predictions are about as accurate as guesses.

Long-term projections, however, may have some value in that there can be an eventual reversion to the mean. Periods of above average performance are often followed or preceded by below average performance. If you start with stocks being very expensive, then often the following decade has below average returns. And when you start with cheap stocks, like we had in 2003, March of 2009, or March of 2020, the following periods are typically above average.

Our approach is to ignore the noise of quarterly or annual projections. But we do position our portfolios towards the long-term trends of what the historical evidence suggests, based on today’s situation. We are not going to attempt to time the market, but we are going to listen to what market history tells us. Let’s talk about three ways investors can position their portfolios for a potentially low-return decade ahead.

Which Equities?

While both Goldman Sachs and Vanguard have low projections for the whole market, both also see opportunities in certain areas. The S&P 500 Index has been a great performer over the past decade, but other categories could do better over the next decade.

Goldman’s analysis believes that the current market concentration will be a major detractor from performance. What is market concentration? The biggest stocks have become the most overvalued, and the weighting of the largest 10 companies is exceptionally high today. While the regular, cap-weighted S&P 500 returns are projected at 3%, Goldman projects that the equal-weighted index could return 7%.

What is an equal weighted index? An equal weighted index invests the same dollar amount into each stock. If there are 500 stocks, each has a weight of 0.2%. And there is an easy solution here, because we can invest in an Equal Weighted Index fund.

Vanguard also expects better returns when we look outside of the US Growth segment. Here are their 10-year median return projections:

US Growth: 1.1%
US Value: 5.7%
US Small Cap: 6.0%
Developed ex-US stocks: 8.0%

This is why we diversify. Past performance is no guarantee of future returns. Even with the low projections for the entire market, there can be categories which could do better. This is the first strategy: diversify away from growth and cap-weighted indexes, and towards the areas with higher expected returns, such as equal-weight, value, small-cap, and international stocks.

DCA and Rebalancing

If you are a younger investor, I don’t want you to look at these reports and think you should forget about investing. The market will not go in a straight line over the next decade and there will undoubtedly be both large drops and large rallies. If you are investing monthly into your 401(k) or IRA, keep doing that. You are dollar cost averaging (DCA) and can benefit from all the volatility. Focus on your accumulation and diversify into low cost index funds in many categories.

For larger portfolios, even a relatively low-return environment can benefit from rebalancing and ongoing portfolio management. In fact, it is during long bull markets that rebalancing is the least helpful. In volatile markets, rebalancing allows us to benefit from the differences between stocks and bonds cycles. With rebalancing, we can sell stocks when they are high (like now) and buy stocks when they are low (like we did in March of 2020). This is part of our ongoing risk management process.

Bonds

Our third pillar of investing in a low-return environment is Bonds. Bonds are back. Our approach is to buy individual high-quality bonds and ladder them for five years. This means we have the bonds in place that will mature each year to meet the cash flow needs of our clients. For retirees, this means we do not have to touch our Equities to meet income requirements when the market is down. This gives us additional flexibility rather than always having to sell Equities to meet withdrawal needs. We want to create certainty with our bonds: income and capital preservation.

More conservative investors may find that this is an opportune time to overweight bonds and have more predictability in their portfolio. We can still get up to 5.4% on a 5-year fixed annuity today. That remains a compelling safe return. Most of the time, people are expecting to get 10% in the stock market. But if we are only expecting to get 3% to 5%, then it hardly seems worth it to take the gamble on stocks. Today, the expected return of a portfolio that is 80% stocks and 20% bonds is hardly different from one with 40% stocks and 60% bonds. Historically, those two portfolios are very different, but not today. Unfortunately, however. there will be a lot more volatility with 80% stocks than 40%.

High Stock Market Equals Low Returns

This can be a difficult lesson for investors to accept. Our natural tendency is to project the current returns into the future and assume the bull market continues. And maybe it will for a while longer. But long-term investors should understand that when the stock market is high that means projected returns are low.

Thankfully, we have a plan and our portfolios reflect the long-term outlook. We diversify into other categories with better expected returns. We dollar cost average and rebalance. And we consider the role and weighting of bonds for each client’s needs. There is no doubt that the projections from Goldman Sachs and Vanguard will prove to be imperfect. The future is always an unknown. Our plans will change, evolve, and adapt. But our focus will remain on doing our best work for planning and creating a portfolio strategy using the information, evidence, and research that is available.

The Bank of Mom and Dad

Posted On October 22, 2024 By Scott Stratton, CFP(R), CFA In Financial Planning / No Comments

More and more young adults are relying on the Bank of Mom and Dad. For perhaps the first time in US history, today’s 30 year old faces a tougher time than their parents did. Today’s young adults may be worse off than their parents were at age 30. And it’s not because of laziness. It has gotten harder for young people to reach the same milestones as their parents.

Thirty years ago, the average house price in the US was $154,200. Today, it is $501,700. The average private university tuition was $11,481, 30 years ago. Today, my Alma Mater, Oberlin College charges $66,410 for tuition alone and has a total annual cost of $86,800. Many of my classmates pursued a 5-year double degree program, which today will probably cost over $450,000.

Wages in many careers have not kept pace with inflation. Students are encouraged to go to the best college possible and to pursue advanced degrees, racking up massive student debt. 45% of student loans are on an income driven repayment plan, and over one million Americans have so little income that they qualify for a $0 monthly payment on their federal students loans. Of course, the interest still accrues and they cannot discharge student loans in bankruptcy.

The cost of healthcare has risen more than inflation and child care expenses have made it difficult for parents. Many have calculated that after-tax, they are better off having one parent stay home.

I think the Wealth Inequality in America is likely to widen rather than shrink for the decades ahead. Who will come out ahead? Adults from wealthy families will likely stay ahead of young adults from less privileged backgrounds. We would like to think that America is a meritocracy, but it is becoming harder for young people to create their own economic security. 70-year old millionaires can lecture young people about hard work, but it’s not in touch with the reality of the times.

I’ll leave it to Washington to solve the nation’s problems, but I doubt that solutions will be coming soon. I think parents are going to have to look out for their kids more and for longer than just getting them to age 18 or 22. Parents will have a role in making sure their children become wealthy. We can only take care of our own family, so let’s start there.

This does not mean setting up a massive Trust Fund so that your kids don’t have to earn a living. No, parents don’t want their kids to become dependent on their generosity. We don’t want to create the moral hazard that they would fail to pursue their own career to the fullest. But there are ways that The Bank of Mom and Dad can help establish your child’s financial success, security, and stability.

The Good News

The good news is that wealthy parents tend to have wealthy children. At age 30, children’s income is highly correlated to their parent’s income. Children may not listen to what you say, but they often make similar decisions as their parents, including in their careers.

Minimizing Student Loans

Here is an important rule of thumb for college students. Keep your total student loans to no more than one-time (1X) your future salary. Entering a career with a $50,000 salary? Your student loans should be $50,000 or less to allow you to repay over the standard 10-year schedule. And only a surgeon making $350,000 a year should ever consider having $350,000 in student loans. But I have seen people with incomes under $100k with that level of student debt.

Here’s some advice for parents:

Make sure your kids are thinking about the 1X rule and choosing a college which will not cripple them with future debt. It’s okay for your children to have some skin in the game and have to pay or borrow a little for college. But don’t let them be foolish and invest $500,000 into a field that will only pay $50,000 a year. Debt is not the path to economic security.
Start saving earlier in a 529 Plan or be willing and able to absorb more of the college costs at the time they are in school.
Aim to have them go into a field with 90% plus employment. There are great careers which are highly in demand and offer a terrific salary. Are there jobs which will have this exact degree as a pre-requisite? Seek degrees with value.
After college, help your kids be mobile. In their 20’s, it is the time to pursue a career and go where that takes them. If the great jobs are on Wall Street, Silicon Valley, or wherever, that flexibility gives them a leg-up versus older job candidates who are unwilling to move. My wife’s company has promoted her four times, including most recently to Paris. This is how you build a career in 2024, not by going back home and living in the same town as your parents.

Fund Their Roth IRAs

I got my first job at age 16 at the minimum wage of $3.35 an hour. I worked at the Long Point amusement park for about four weeks before it burned down from an electrical short. The owner didn’t have insurance and that was the end of the 80 year old park – and my first job. I do think having a part time job is a great learning experience and can help young people develop important skills.

Anyone who has earned income can fund a Roth IRA, including someone who is 16 or younger. What I would suggest parents do is allow your kids to keep their income while the parents fund their children’s Roth IRAs. You will give them a tremendous advantage in their future wealth by getting this early start. You can invest up to $7,000 a year, or the level of their annual income, whichever is lower.

Let’s say you fund a Roth IRA for your son or daughter for $5,000 for 10 years from age 16 through 25. We invest in an Index Fund and earn 7% per year. By the time they are age 66, they would have $1,181,000 in their tax-free account, all thanks to Mom and Dad funding a Roth IRA for their first 10 years of part-time work. That’s the power of compound interest.

Annual Gift Exclusion

If you have enough in resources to know that your retirement is secure and you will have more than enough, then you may want to start giving away some money during your lifetime to your children. The annual gift tax exclusion for 2024 is $18,000 per person. You can give that amount to each child and a married couple can double that, to $36,000 per child per year.

Every article seems to get this wrong: If you give away more than the annual exclusion you don’t immediately owe a gift tax. But you must file a gift tax return and the amount above the exclusion will reduce your lifetime unified estate/gift exemption. For 2024 that amount is $13.61 million and again it is double for a married couple. Most parents are going to be below the lifetime exemption amount and could give away more. But, the easiest first step is to use the full $18,000 annual exclusion.

This could be a great way to gradually create an account which your adult children could use as a house down payment, or to start a business, or pursue extra career development. This account could also serve to teach them about long-term investing, the benefits of index funds, and planning for goals.

Housing and Living Expenses

Certainly a lot of parents are helping their young adults with housing, a car, health insurance, cell phones, etc. Hopefully, this will allow them to focus on developing their long-term career and avoid going into debt. In a lot of expensive areas, kids are returning home to live with their parents after college. This can help them pay down their student loans faster. And with rents having gone up so much since 2019, this seems to be becoming more and more common.

What about buying a duplex for your child to House Hack? There are lots of creative ways to help your children with expenses. The goal is to have them get started investing and be able to save aggressively or pay down debt faster.

Managing The Bank of Mom and Dad

No One Is Self-Made. We have all benefited from the Education system in America, as well as the laws and regulations which promote free trade and protect employee rights. Compared to the rest of the world, the US remains a great place to become an entrepreneur or highly paid professional. We shouldn’t forget the unique opportunities we have to find economic security in the US. But even with all the benefits, the fact remains that parents have a very large role to play.

It is getting harder for today’s young adults. Inflation is a problem for housing, college tuition, health care, and starting a family. Those costs have grown much faster than incomes. As a result, young adults are falling behind previous generations. The Bank of Mom and Dad can help with planning, wisdom, and yes, sometimes with more money. Nearly half of all first-time homebuyers under age 35 have had some family assistance with their purchase.

Hopefully, well-to-do parents are already thinking about how they can create inter-generational wealth. What are the most effective ways and times to be giving money to your kids? What can go wrong or what are some unintended consequences? How do you treat two or three kids with different needs and abilities to handle the money? These are not easy decisions or conversations. But they are vital discussions to be having as a family, and yes, with your financial planner, too.

We can help you determine what you can truly afford and think about how to best help children with your financial support. We have a number of families where we work with the parents and with their children in their twenties and thirties. Wealth is a habit, and financial planning is a skill. Being good with money is not a skill which is being taught in school, unfortunately. But parents do have a role in talking about money, and even more importantly, modelling the behavior and generosity which you hope to instill in your children.

Extra Catch-Up Contributions for 2025

Posted On October 5, 2024 By Scott Stratton, CFP(R), CFA In Retirement Planning / No Comments

There are extra catch-up contributions for 2025 which will allow some investors to save even more. The SECURE Act 2.0 allows savers age 60 to 63 to contribute a higher catch-up amount to their 401(k), 403(b), or SIMPLE IRA plans. These amounts are 50% more than the regular catch-up contributions for savers age 50+. Along with this good news, I’m afraid there is also some bad news which will impact many of my readers. Congress giveth and Congress taketh away. Here are the details.

What Age?

First, an important definition for retirement plans. When we talk about your age for 2025, that is the age you are at the end of the year, on December 31, 2025. You could be 59 for most of the year, but as long as you turn 60 before the end of the year, you treat the whole year as if you are 60. There are no partial years or pro-rated benefits. You may be 49 most of the year, but as long as you are 50 on December 31, you are 50 for the whole year.

Contribution Limits for 2025

401(k) and 403(b)

Under age 50: $24,000
Age 50+: plus a $7,500 catch-up = $31,500
Age 60-63 only: a $11,250 catch-up = $35,250

SIMPLE IRAs

Under 50: $16,500
Age 50+: plus a catch-up of $3,500 = $20,000
Age 60-63 only: a $5,250 catch-up = $21,750

Please note that the larger catch-up will apply only from age 60 to 63. The year when you turn 64, the catch-up amount drops back down to the regular age 50 catch-up amount.

New Limits on High Earners

There’s a new problem for high-earners, which will take effect the following year. Starting January 1, 2026, if you make over $145,000, you can make catch-up contributions only into a Roth 401(k). Those catch-up contributions will be after-tax, not tax-deductible. This will be based on your prior year (2025) wages. Your employer will have to determine if you are eligible to make traditional catch-up contributions, or if you will only be allowed to make Roth catch-up contributions. Either way, you can still make the normal contribution (presently $24,000) into your traditional 401(k). This limitation will only impact the catch-up contributions.

One Step Forward, Two Steps Backwards

You got all excited to learn about the extra catch-up contributions for 2025. It’s a small amount for only four years of your life, but thank you, Washington, for thinking of us. And the following year, they take away the ability to deduct the catch-up contribution for everyone over 50 who makes above $145,000. If you planned to work to 65 or 70, you just lost 15 to 20 years of tax-deductible catch-up contributions.

This hurts because in your working years, you might be paying 24%, 32%, 35% or more in Income taxes. You want those 401(k) deductions in your prime earning years. Once you are retired, you will be in a lower tax bracket, maybe 12% or 22%. Starting in 2026, they’re making you pay taxes on your catch-up contributions and paying the higher taxes today.

Saving is your responsibility. Most of us don’t work for an employer who provides a generous pension plan. We face a looming Social Security crisis in less than a decade now. I haven’t met too many people who felt they had over-saved for retirement. But I have met a lot who are concerned that they are behind or not on-track for a comfortable retirement. And that is what we do here at Good Life Wealth Management everyday – think, plan, and deliver on your retirement goals.

Hard Work Doesn’t Create Wealth

Posted On September 21, 2024 By Scott Stratton, CFP(R), CFA In Behavioral Finance / No Comments

When asked about their success, some wealthy people are quick to cite hard work as their key to success. I’m sure they have worked hard. But hard work doesn’t create wealth.

“Hard work” is a classic example of the correlation-causation fallacy. Wealthy people did work hard, but the vast majority of hard working people are not going to become wealthy. Instead, I want to talk about what really helps people to become wealthy: intention and process. Once those are in place, there may well be hard work, discipline, patience, and grit. Those are the fuel for creating wealth, but they are not the engine. The engine is creating intention and process.

Intention

Wealth is not an accident, it requires intention, financial literacy, and planning. When we are clear on our goals and values, our decisions start to become more aligned. My wealthy clients have made economic security a high priority. They focus on building a high income that supports their goals. Their intentions shape their education, careers, spending habits, personal vision, and other life-long decisions. Wealthy people have a wealthy mindset and focus on the following:

Living below your means. Most Americans spend 100% of their income. (Some spend more and go into debt.) If you can make frugal choices on your house, car, and leisure spending (especially eating out and vacations), you can place yourself in a situation where you can save a meaningful amount of money.
Delayed gratification. Your future self will thank you for the actions you take today. The more you can save today, the faster you may reach your finish line. Focus on increasing your income, not so you can spend more, but so that you can save more.
Understand things will not make you happy. We live in a consumer culture of materialism. There are too many people who are focused on appearing successful rather than being successful. Your home is not an investment, it is an expense.
Track your net worth, know your assets and liabilities. Have a plan. Most Americans spend more time planning a week of vacation than they do their entire future. Hoping you become wealthy is not a plan.
Start early. Compounding is amazing. Believe in the process and stick with it.

At retirement age, some investors will be millionaires. And they will work alongside people who have the same paycheck but who will retire with almost nothing. The successful made different decisions. They put in the maximum in their 401(k), not the minimum to get the company match. Their decisions reflected their intention to achieve financial success.

Process: Automatic Beats Hope

The process of becoming wealthy is simple. Save regularly over time and invest efficiently. It’s really not rocket science. The key is to make the process automatic. If you wait until the end of the year to fund your Roth IRA, you might not have an extra $7,000 lying around for you and your spouse. But if you set up monthly contributions of $583, you can achieve the same result. And then you don’t even have to think about it. Otherwise, if you are putting yourself in a position where you are hoping you can save, you are setting yourself up to fail.

Automate your contributions to your 401(k), IRA, 529 or other accounts. You can’t spend the money that is automatically contributed. Increase these contributions every year until you reach the maximum.
Don’t time the market. You will experience a Bear Market every 4-10 years. If you panic and sell everything, you cannot recover. In hindsight, every Bear Market (2000, 2008, 2020), was an amazing buying opportunity. Keep buying all the time. When you are young, you should love buying in a Bear Market.
Don’t aim to beat the market. In 20 years as a wealth manager, I’ve never met anyone who was wealthy because of their brilliant stock picks. The market does whatever it does. And what it has done over the years is fantastic and more than enough. Focus on what you can control: your savings rate. And then keep costs, taxes, and turnover low. Index funds work.
Be an optimist. You have to have some faith in the process. Not a blind faith, but the fortitude to stick with the plan when times are tough.

Things Always Change

America is the land of opportunity. We’ve never had a more level playing field than today for any American to become wealthy. Unfortunately, it is also becoming harder to get ahead. Many young adults face a tougher time than their parents in buying a house, paying off student loans, and being able to save. The wealth gap is widening and attaining economic security is becoming more challenging.

Even against that backdrop, it is still possible to become wealthy. Everyone wants to be a millionaire, but they have to first figure out how to get to $100,000. Once you’ve done that, getting to $200k and then $400k, is just a matter of time. Wealth creates more wealth. You build a savings muscle and establish your wealth engine, and then it just works for you.

Intention sets your focus and creates the decisions which enable you to save. Take control of your financial life and have a plan. Process is understanding what works and keeping your momentum headed in the right direction. Automate your savings and you remove yourself as the roadblock to your success. Neither intention nor process require hard work. They are a mindset.

You should work hard to develop your career and maximize your earnings. But that hard work won’t create wealth if you don’t have alignment on how your money can create your financial independence for you over time. Years from now, when a young investor asks about the cause of your success, I hope you can give the right answer. It was intention and process, not hard work, that created your wealth.

What is Survivorship Bias?

Posted On August 15, 2024 By Scott Stratton, CFP(R), CFA In Portfolio Management /

Survivorship bias is the problem that the track record of today’s stocks reflects only the ones that survived. The stocks and funds which failed are no longer part of the performance history of today’s stocks or mutual fund databases. And as we will see, over the years, there have been a lot of stocks that have had bad returns and disappeared. We will also discuss how to invest wisely given the reality of survivorship bias.

Growing up in Rochester NY, my neighbor on the left worked for Eastman Kodak. Our neighbor on the right worked for Kodak. And all three neighbors across the street worked for Kodak. Kodak Park was the largest industrial site in the world, stretching for miles along Ridge Road. Rochester was a company town and there was tremendous pride in Kodak. The stock had done well for employees and residents, the company contributed a lot to the community, and the pension plan provided security to tens of thousands of retirees.

Kodak, the stock, was part of the S&P 500 Index and was one of 30 components of the Dow Jones Industrial Average from 1930 until April 2004. The company actually invented the digital camera in 1975, but thought it would be too impractical to ever have value. The rest, as they say, is history. The company had a long decline into obsolescence and filed for bankruptcy in 2012. The once mighty stock went to zero.

Stock Market 1926 through 2023

A new research paper by Hendrik Bessembinder looks at US stocks from 1926 through 2023, a 98-year period. During this period, there were a total of 29,078 US-listed stocks. Today, there are around 5,000. He looked at the performance of these stocks and it is a remarkable picture of Survivorship Bias.

Only 31 stocks have been in existence for the entire 98 years. The average stock existed only for 11.6 years. Approximately 24,000 companies have disappeared: either bankrupt, merged, acquired, or taken private.
51 percent of the stocks had negative returns over their entire life, with a median compound cumulative return of -7.41%. Most stocks lost money!
Thankfully, the compounding effect of the winning stocks greatly offset the stocks which lost money. The mean performance is much better than the median performance of the 29,078 stocks.
If you randomly select 10 stocks from history, your chance of outperforming the S&P 500 is very small. That is because most of the wealth creation in the market comes from a small percentage of top-performing companies. The majority of stocks under-perform the index.

Idiosyncratic Risk

Eastman Kodak, Lehman Brothers, Enron, and General Motors all went bankrupt and their stocks went to zero. Even though the stock market has done well over the long-term, there are still many individual stocks that get destroyed. We call this Idiosyncratic Risk, or “company specific” risk. Unfortunately, even if you do your homework, investors risk being caught in the next Bear Stearns or Washington Mutual.

What can you do to address Survivorship Bias and reduce the Idiosyncratic Risk of individual stocks?

Diversify extensively with index funds. While single companies do go bankrupt, we have never seen all 500 companies of the S&P 500 index go bankrupt at once. An index fund can greatly spread out your risk. Recognize the difference between speculating on an individual company versus investing in the market as a whole.
Note that index funds are not static. Every year, the S&P 500 Index adds growing companies and drops other companies which are on their way down. Sure, there are still surprises where an S&P 500 company disappears suddenly (like Silicon Valley Bank last year), but you still have 499 other holdings.

Fund Shenanigans

It’s not just individual stocks that exhibit survivorship bias. Mutual Fund companies do the same thing, deliberately getting rid of their worst funds. A fund with a poor track record eventually gets so small that it is unprofitable, and the fund company shuts it down. Even more nefarious, companies create dozens of stock funds and then take the ones with a poor track record and roll them into their funds with better ratings. The crappy fund disappears and now it looks like all their funds are 4-star and 5-star funds!

You might think the solution is to avoid the mutual funds with a poor track record and go with a top ranked actively managed fund. Unfortunately, we know that performance is rarely consistent with actively managed mutual funds. Is that my opinion? No, this is what decades of data shows from the Standard and Poors Persistence Scorecard. For example, there were more than 2000 US stock mutual funds in December 2019. The top quartile (the top 25%) included 529 funds in 2019, but not a single one of those funds remained in the top quartile over the next four years, through December 2023. Past performance (you should know this by heart by now) is no guarantee of future results.

One of the consistent findings of the S&P Persistence Scorecard is that the worst performing funds are the most likely to merge or be shut down. And then you can’t find those one-star funds on Morningstar because they no longer exist. That’s survivorship bias. Our approach: use low-cost index funds from Vanguard, SPDRs, and others. Then we are not chasing performance, looking for the hot fund, sector, or country. And we have been saying for a long time: the vast majority of active managers under-perform their benchmark over time.

Keeping It Simple

The stocks which exist today are different from the ones from 98 years ago. Companies come and go. Survivorship Bias masks the poor track record of the many stocks and funds which have disappeared. When we only see the ones which survived and thrived, investing success looks easier and more inevitable than it really is. Unfortunately, there are stocks and funds out there today which will someday suffer the same fate as Eastman Kodak and thousands of other past stocks. Understanding this history will help you be a better investor in the decades ahead.

How can we reduce Idiosyncratic Risk or Survivorship Bias? Fortunately for investors, this complex question has a simple answer. We can diversify and reduce the importance of any one stock in our portfolio. With index funds, we get broad diversification, with hundreds or thousands of holdings, in a low-cost, tax-efficient vehicle. No doubt an index fund will own some stocks that fail, but one stock out of 500 may only move the index by 0.2% for one day. It often is hardly even noticed. And using index funds also helps keep us out of the worst actively managed funds, which sometimes were the best funds from five years ago. These are time tested strategies and the data keeps proving that this approach remains a wise choice for investors.

Bubble, Bubble Toil and Trouble

Posted On July 27, 2024 By Scott Stratton, CFP(R), CFA In Portfolio Management /

A bubble is brewing. The price of US Tech stocks has grown much faster than their earnings, fueled by the hype of AI transforming productivity and life as we know it. The comparison with 1999 is uncanny, but it’s not that investors have forgotten about the Tech Bubble. I think many are just hoping to make additional gains while momentum is leading these stocks higher.

We are going to look at valuations to put current prices in perspective. Today’s tech stocks have massive profits, unlike the cash-burning dot-com’s that went bankrupt in 2000. It’s great that these tech companies are doing so well, but that doesn’t mean that the price of their stock can never be too high. While the prices have not yet reached absurd levels, they are elevated enough to raise concerns about their sustainability.

Too Big?

Just how big have tech stocks gotten? The three largest stocks in the world are Nvidia, Apple, and Microsoft, all recently with values over $3 trillion, each. Let’s compare these three stocks to countries. Nvidia is worth more than all the stocks in Germany. All 489 German companies put together are worth less than Nvidia. Apple is worth more than all the stocks in the UK. Microsoft is worth more than all the stocks in France. Is each of these companies really worth more than the entire stock market of a major European economy? Apparently the market thinks so, but it is a remarkable disparity.

Nvidia added $1 trillion in market cap, going from $2 trillion to $3 trillion, in just 30 days. Compare this to Warren Buffet at Berkshire Hathaway. He is considered by many to be the greatest investor ever, and it took him 60 years to grow his company to a value of $875 billion. Nvidia grew that much in value in 30 days. Did they do something in 30 days that is worth more than the company Warren Buffet has built over 60 years? We will have to wait and see, but I’m a skeptic.

Value Matters

Today, Nvidia is trading for a Price/Earnings ratio of 65 times earnings, and 43 times the expected earnings of the year ahead. That is double the PE of the S&P 500 Index at 22 times earnings. And today’s S&P 500 is in the top 10% most expensive, historically. These companies will have to really maintain investor excitement, if the stocks are priced at double the market PE. The growth of these tech stocks has come from expanding the multiple – the P part of the PE ratio. The earnings, the E part of the PE ratio, needs to catch up. That could take years. I pick on Nvidia, but the story is similar for Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Apple, Alphabet, and Tesla. All these are richly valued even though they are incredibly profitable.

After the 2000 tech bubble, many of the survivors took a decade to get back to their value at the peak. You may recall, this was called “the lost decade” in the stock market. I certainly hope this doesn’t happen again. But, today’s most expensive stocks could risk having disappointing returns for years to come. In the past, a PE of 23 often was a bull market peak valuation.

There are other categories which are not as overvalued as Tech. Consider the comparison of Growth Stocks (NASDAQ) versus Value Stocks (Small Cap Russell 2000), with this chart from DoubleLine. Today, the growth/value divide has actually exceeded the levels of 1999. To me this suggests there could be a reversion to the mean in the next couple of years, where growth lags and value finally does well.

Looking Ahead

Investors spend too much time looking at the rear view mirror rather than forward through the windshield. Past performance is not indicative of future returns. And when a bubble occurs, it can take years to deflate. The stocks with the best past returns can do poorly, while the stocks with the worst recent returns may do better going forward. Consider the projected annual returns, for the next 10 years, from the Vanguard Capital Markets Model:

US Growth Stocks: 0.4% – 2.4%
US Value Stocks: 4.1% – 6.1%
US Small Cap: 4.3% – 6.3%
Foreign Developed Stocks: 6.7% – 8.7%
Emerging Markets: 6.0% – 8.0%

According to their calculation, you would be better off buying a 10-year US Treasury Bond (at 4.25% today), rather than owning US growth stocks over the next decade. Investors have been enjoying Tech growing at 20% a year, and now we are looking at an expected return of 1.4%. This is why we own value stocks, small cap, foreign stocks, and emerging markets in our portfolios. We are looking forward, not backward at past returns, when creating our models. We are diversifying into what we believe might be tomorrow’s winners rather than looking to concentrate into what has worked most recently.

Evidence Based Investing

We will see if today’s tech stocks have become an unsustainable bubble. These are really good companies which have enormous profits and are still growing at attractive rates. Even if there is not an abrupt bursting of the tech bubble, it is possible that growth segments will under-perform other categories over the years ahead. There is a strong rationale to be cautious about investing in stocks which have become very expensive.

Over the next month or year, growth stocks could continue to go up. Still, tech stocks could prove to be in a bubble which we see correct later. There might be an outside catalyst (think COVID, geopolitical event, debt crisis, recession, or something which no one had even considered), which causes a drop in the market. If this occurs, the most expensive stocks often sell off the most.

Tech stocks have become very large, quite expensive, and have a lower expected return than other stocks and many bonds. Our diversification allows us to both play defense today and also to own the categories with the highest expected return going forward. Don’t give up on Diversification!

The Risk of Distraction

Posted On July 19, 2024 By Scott Stratton, CFP(R), CFA In Behavioral Finance /

Building wealth is a long-term process, a habit rather than a single event. Being a successful investor requires patience and determination, which can be challenging when there are so many distractions to drag us off course. 2024 is turning out to be an excellent year for investors, but there is so much uncertainty and negativity, it can be tough to maintain our focus.

Unfortunately, the more easily we are distracted from our plan, the more we are tempted to change direction with our investments. Tinkering with a long-term plan because of short-term thinking, often hampers returns rather than improves returns. The urgency of “don’t just sit there, do something!” can lead investors to do the wrong thing at the wrong time.

Election Years

This election cycle is certainly unusual and polarizing. Some people are excited about their candidate. Both sides insist there will be catastrophic consequences if their opponent wins. And, I think a lot of people are disappointed that with 340 million people in the US, these were the two best people we could find to run for president.

Yes, elections matter a great deal. The economy, taxes, laws and regulations, foreign policy, and many other things could get worse. But, change may be slow to come and could be reversed by a subsequent administrations. Regardless of who wins, a dysfunctional Congress seems likely to continue.

Nervous investors are starting to ask if they should change their portfolio or go to cash. We won’t be recommending that or making changes to our portfolio models based on the fact that it is an election year. Vanguard has found that markets performed well under both Republican and Democratic presidents, without a statistically significant difference. And election years, although volatile, had comparable returns to non-election years. (Actually slightly better, on average.) In other words, thinking about making big changes to your portfolio because of the election is likely to be a bad idea.

Behavioral Finance and Cognitive Biases

It can be difficult to stick with a long-term portfolio because we are wired to think about immediate dangers rather than growth over 10, 20, or 50 years. Our minds are incredible computers, but sometimes our mental shortcuts encourage decisions which are not in our best interest. The science of Behavioral Finance has categorized many of these cognitive biases. Even experienced investors have to guard against making decisions which distract us from our long-term wealth building process. For example,

Herd behavior. Everyone else is buying Nvidia, so should you! You don’t want to miss out.
Hot Hand Fallacy. Nvidia is up 154% over the past year, so it should continue to have fantastic returns.
Recency bias. We focus on the performance of tech stocks over the past 12 months, and forget about the performance of tech stocks in 2000-2001. (People remember recent events better than past events.)
Confirmation bias. You seek out evidence which supports your beliefs, but ignore other evidence which might challenge your beliefs.
Hindsight bias. Looking back on past events and thinking that the outcomes were obvious and predictable.

And then there is the GI Joe Fallacy: the mistaken assumption that knowing about a bias is enough to overcome it. So, even if you know about cognitive biases, there is no guarantee that your thoughts are not being filtered through your biases. Hopefully, though, being aware of these biases can help you continually question your thought process and decisions.

Instead, Ask Yourself

Let’s reframe our five biases above into more rational questions or statements.

Herd behavior: Is NVDA still a good value today or are there other stocks which might offer a more compelling return going forward? (Note, talking about the stock is not the same as talking about the company. A great company is not a good investment if the price is too high.)
Hot hand fallacy: NVIDIA is up 154% today. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. If anything, you might expect returns to be mean reverting, rather than continuing to go parabolic forever.
Recency bias: Forget about the past 12 months. What are the expected returns for the next 10 years? What can we learn from historic situations which were like today?
Confirmation bias: Continually ask yourself: Am I willing and able to change my mind if there was enough evidence? Seek out that evidence and review it objectively.
Hindsight bias: Recognize that there were other outcomes which could have occurred. Keep a journal of your decisions and review them in a year or two. (I publish my annual Investment Themes on my blog and track the results.) This will keep you humble.

Less is More

There will undoubtedly be tough times in the stock market at some point in the future. I’m not here to paint a rosy picture where everything will be easy. Concerns about the elections, economy, debt, etc. have their merit. Still, I don’t know of anyone who has been able to time the market. And people who think the sky is falling have not participated in remarkable gains over the past decade. What has worked is to be a buy and hold, long-term investor. So, here is how we invest in a systematic manner to avoid the cognitive biases and errors:

Index funds. Buying 500 stocks is a lot less risky than buying one stock. I would rather invest in the whole market than bet on one stock. Individual companies can and do go out of business. 80-90% of stock pickers under-perform their benchmark over 5 years or more.
Focus on asset allocation. What is your mix of large vs. small, US stocks vs. international, and stocks vs. bonds? Most of the difference in returns is determined by your asset allocation.
Keep costs, taxes, and trading to an absolute minimum.
Rebalance. Rebalancing is a systematic way to buy stocks when they are cheap and sell them when they become more expensive. Rebalancing helps you maintain your desired level of risk.
Invest as is appropriate for your risk tolerance and time horizon. And then leave it alone, knowing that there are up years and down years in the market.

The news seems to be becoming more and more of a circus. The risk of distraction could scare investors to sell everything and go into cash, or to chase performance on today’s hot stocks. Our recommendation is to ignore the election hype. Educate yourself on cognitive biases and understand that markets have up and down cycles. All of this will lead you to recognize that no one can predict what the markets are going to do over the next 6-12 months. But the markets are so often growing that being out of the market for a year usually proves to be a mistake. And when the market is on a roll, there is the danger of getting too enthusiastic about individual companies and ignoring fundamentals. Avoid making big mistakes and stick with the plan!

Stocks, Bonds, and Risk

Posted On May 27, 2024 By Scott Stratton, CFP(R), CFA In Portfolio Management /

I enjoy watching history documentaries, especially about the WWII era. One film shared this quote from a US Army manual:

“…commanders need to balance the tension between protecting the force, and accepting and managing risks that must be taken to accomplish their mission…”

While I am neither soldier nor general, as a portfolio manager, my challenge is to protect client’s assets while accepting and managing the risks that must be taken to achieve their goals, such as retirement. Stocks have been doing very well. In the past week, the S&P 500, NASDAQ, and the Dow have all made new highs. The S&P is up 11 percent, year to date, a fantastic run on top of last year’s great performance. Where are the risks today, and how can we manage the risks to accomplish our mission?

Performance Chasing

Some investors are frustrated that their diversified portfolio is not up as much as the S&P. There is an increasing feeling that stocks are invincible right now and everyone wants to ride the gravy train for as long as they can. Caution is being thrown to the wind as investors seem to be willing to pay any price for certain tech stocks – even if the company is trading for 100 times what they will make this year. The Bull Market appears to be alive and well and so is investors’ performance chasing.

It’s remarkable that we’ve had such high interest rates, and an inverted yield curve, and the economy continues to grow. Maybe the Fed will finally engineer the soft landing that they have been unable to achieve in the past. I hope that happens, but hope is not a good investment rationale.

We remain invested in the stock market, but I hardly think this is the time to become more aggressive. At some point, the high valuations will matter. In the past, when the S&P has traded for 21 times forward earnings (like now), the subsequent years of returns were below average. That should make sense to everyone, just as when the market is cheap, the subsequent returns are usually above average. Both reflect a reversion to the mean.

Bonds Can Get The Job Done

What do today’s stock valuations suggest about forward returns? As of May 15, 2024, the Vanguard Capital Markets Model suggests a 10-year return of US stocks of 4.3%, plus or minus one percent. That is less than half of historical returns, and would be quite a disappointing performance.

And where are bond yields today? The 10-year US Treasury has a yield of 4.5% and we can find 10-year Agency bonds near 6%. Remarkably, the expected return from bonds is now higher than stocks for the next decade. Investors are having a hard time getting their head around this new reality because over the past decade, the S&P 500 (SPY) is up 12% annually, while the Aggregate bond index (AGG) is up only 1.25% a year.

At no point in the last 15 years have bonds looked this good compared to stocks, on a forward looking basis. To investors, bonds look boring and stocks are exciting. However, if you are focused on how to achieve your goals over the next decade, while minimizing the risk of losses to your portfolio, you may benefit from adding more bonds.

What Is Your Mission?

Many of my clients are within five years of retirement or have already retired. For many, our mission is to provide steady growth, spin off some income, and not blow up the portfolio. We are concerned about sequence of returns risk and longevity risk. For clients needing income and withdrawals, bonds and fixed annuities are an excellent choice.

For investors who are in growth mode, there is still a good case for bonds. We should focus on the long-term returns available, with the least amount of volatility. In portfolio management terms, we aim to provide a strong risk-adjusted return, measured by a higher Sharpe Ratio. And for these growth investors, bonds still play a role. Bonds can improve our risk profile and also provide an opportunity for flexibility in the future.

With bonds, you can consolidate your gains while you wait for the stock market to have a correction at some point in the years ahead. With stocks, we may have some years of growth and then the next Bear Market could bring us right back to today’s levels (or maybe even lower). The investor who has bonds (growing by 5%), has a future opportunity to rebalance. We can trim the bonds and buy back stocks when they trade at a lower Price to Earnings ratio (PE). We can be defensive today, while waiting for a better opportunity to be more aggressive.

Don’t Be A Hero

You don’t have to be fully invested in stocks. If you have done a financial plan, you should have an idea of what required return is necessary to accomplish your goals. In many cases, today, bonds can provide the return needed to achieve your objectives. And that reduces the uncertainty of stocks not performing as hoped or as they have historically.

Ideally, investing should be boring. We don’t want to have exciting investments. Our Wealth Management process is focused on protecting your wealth and accepting and managing the risks that must be taken to accomplish your goals. If we can take a path with less risk and more certainty, that is often what we should choose. We look at future expected returns as our guide, rather than recent past performance.

Stocks have had a strong performance and we will continue to invest in a diversified portfolio. We should also point out that while the expected return of US stocks is only 4.3%, Ex-US stocks have an expected return of 7.7%. Opportunities still exist. But for now, bonds offer a compelling return versus an expensive US stock market.

What is a MYGA Annuity?

Posted On March 7, 2024 By Scott Stratton, CFP(R), CFA In Portfolio Management, Retirement Planning /

A MYGA is a Multi-Year Guarantee Annuity. It is also called a Fixed-Rate Annuity and behaves somewhat like a CD. There is a fixed rate of return for a set term, typically 3-10 years. At the end of the term, you can walk away with your money or reinvest it into another annuity or something else. Today’s MYGA rates are in the mid-5% range, the best they have been in a decade.

Annuities are one of the most confusing insurance products for consumers because there are so many varieties. In addition to MYGAs, there are Variable Annuities, Fixed Index Annuities, and Single Premium Immediate Annuities (SPIAs). Some of these are expensive, illiquid, and have quite a poor reputation. That’s because the Variable and Index annuities can pay a high commission, and have been sold by unscrupulous insurance agents to clients who didn’t understand what they were buying. States have been cracking down on bad agents, but even now, some of these products are highly complex and difficult to understand how they actually work. They are a tool for a very specific job and investors have to make sure that it is right for them. Unfortunately, with some agents, their only tool is a hammer, so every problem looks like a nail.

Why I like MYGAs

I do like MYGAs and think they are a good fit for some of my clients. Unlike the other annuities, MYGAs are simple and easy to understand. I have some of my own money in a MYGA and will probably add more over time. We consider a MYGA to be part of our fixed income allocation. For example, we may have a target portfolio of 60/40 – 60% stocks and 40% fixed income – and a MYGA can be part of the 40%.

Here are some of the benefits of a MYGA:

Fixed rate of return, set for the duration of the term. Non-callable (more about this below).
Your principal is guaranteed. MYGAs are very safe.
Tax-deferral. You pay no income taxes on your MYGA until it is withdrawn. This can be beneficial if you are in a high tax bracket now, and want to delay withdrawals until you are in a lower tax bracket in retirement.
You can continue the tax deferral at the end of the term with a 1035 exchange to another annuity or insurance product. This is a tax-free rollover.
Creditor protection. As an insurance product, a MYGA offers asset protection.

Lock in Today’s Rates

Interest Rates have risen a lot over the last two years as the Federal Reserve has increased rates to fight inflation. As a result, the rates on MYGAs are the best they have been in over a decade, over 5% today. The expectation on Wall Street is that the Fed will begin cutting interest rates sometime this year as inflation is better under control.

Now appears to be a good time to lock-in today’s high interest rates with a MYGA. This is one of their big advantages over most bonds. Today’s bonds often are callable. This means that the issuer can redeem the bonds ahead of schedule. So, when we buy an 5-year Agency or Corporate bond with a yield of 5.5%, there’s no guarantee that we will actually get to keep the bond for the full five years. In fact, if interest rates drop (as expected), there will be a wave of calls, as issuers will be able to refinance their debt to lower interest rates.

We are already seeing quite a few Agency bonds getting called in the past month.

We don’t have this problem with a MYGA, they are not callable. The rate is guaranteed for the full duration. Given the choice of a 5.5% callable bond or a 5.5% MYGA, I would prefer the annuity given the possibility of lower rates ahead. The MYGA will lock-in today’s rates whereas the callable bond might be just temporary. If rates fall to 4%, the 5.5% bond gets called and then our only option is to buy a 4% bond.

Some bonds are not callable, most notably US Treasuries. However, the rates on MYGAs are about 1% higher than Treasuries today. If you are planning to hold to maturity, I would prefer a MYGA over a lower-yielding, non-callable bond.

The Fine Print

What are the downsides to a MYGA? The main one is that they are not liquid and there are steep surrender charges if you want your money back before the term is complete. Some will allow you to withdraw your annual interest or 10% a year. Other MYGAs do not allow any withdrawals without a penalty. Generally, the higher the yield, the more restrictions.

One way we can address the lack of liquidity is to “ladder” annuities. Instead of putting all the money into one duration, we spread the money out over different years. For example, instead of having $50,000 in one annuity that matures in five years, we have $10,000 in five annuities that mature in 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 years. This way we will have access to some money each and every year.

Like a 401(k) or IRA, withdrawals from an annuity prior to age 59 1/2 will carry a 10% penalty for pre-mature distributions from the IRS. The penalty only applies to the earnings portion. Think of a MYGA as another type of retirement account.

Lastly, I do get paid a commission on the sale of the annuity from the insurance company. This does not come out of your principal – if you invest $10,000, all $10,000 is invested and growing. And I do not charge an investment management fee on a MYGA, unlike a bond. A 5% MYGA will net you 5%, whereas a 5% bond will net you 4% after fees. So in this case, I think the commission structure is actually preferable for investors.

Is a MYGA right for you?

Most of my MYGA buyers are in their 50s and older and have a lot of fixed income holdings already. They don’t need this money until after 59 1/2 and are okay with tying it up, in exchange for the guarantees and tax-deferral benefits. They have other sources of liquidity and a solid emergency fund. When we compare the pros and cons of a MYGA to a high-quality bond, for some the MYGA is a good choice. If you are not a current client, but are interested in just a MYGA, we can help you with no additional obligation. I am an independent agent and can compare the rates and features of MYGAs from different insurers.

Many investors have been wishing for a safe investment where they can just make 5% and not lose any money. That used to be readily available 20 years ago, but disappeared after 2009 when central banks took interest rates down to zero. Today 5% is back and we can lock it in for 3-10 years with a MYGA. You can’t get that in a 10-year Treasury. Other bonds and CDs with comparable rates are probably callable. If you want a safe, non-callable, guaranteed 5%+, a MYGA may be for you.

20 Years Financial Planning

Posted On February 1, 2024 By Scott Stratton, CFP(R), CFA In Behavioral Finance /

This month marks 20 years as a financial advisor for me. A lot has changed in that time. When I started, we had to hand-write trade tickets, on blue paper for Buy and salmon for Sell, and fax them to the back office. We would photocopy account applications for our file, fax it in to our custodian, and then mail the original signature.

But a lot has not changed. Markets are still volatile. Timing doesn’t work. Investors still have biases. And good habits build wealth over time.

I am happy to celebrate this milestone, and incredibly grateful for the clients who have trusted me with their finances. I’m excited to start a third decade of service. Markets still fascinate me, and I love getting to help families build and preserve their wealth. One of my early clients passed on years ago, but now I work with their children who are approaching retirement age. And we have accounts for the grandchildren, and we have started 529 college savings accounts for the great-grandchildren. Working with four generations of one family gives you a new perspective about the significance of planning.

Learning the Hard Way

I started buying individual stocks in 1998, right at the end of the tech bubble. I had some profitable investments and some that did poorly. By the time I became an advisor in 2004, I think I had already made every mistake possible with my own investments. You can learn from a book, but the pain of losing your own hard-earned money is a more effective lesson.

After 2000, there were three years of losses in the S&P 500 Index, with the back to back shocks of the tech bubble and then 9/11 in 2001. During this time, I was looking for market inefficiencies and they were still existent back then. There were 50% more stocks than today and stock trading was still done by people on the floor of the NYSE, not on computers.

I would find tiny, small cap regional banks which traded only a couple of thousand shares a day. These stocks had a very wide bid/ask spread. For example, the market might show a bid of $20.00 and an ask of $21.00. If you entered a buy order at the market, you would buy at $21. And if you entered a sell order, you would sell at $20. Sometimes the stock would trade in the middle at $20.50, but large trades could easily move the market, and they would either pay too much to buy or get too little when they sold. Wall Street couldn’t touch these stocks and they were too small to bother.

The spread was often 5%: a $1 spread on a $20 stock. And since the expected return of the whole market was only 10% a year, making 5% on a trade over a day or two seemed pretty attractive. So, I would set a buy limit order at the Bid price of $20 and be the ready buyer for anyone who wanted to sell. And once I had shares, I would set a limit order to sell at the Ask price of $21. When this worked, I could make 3-5% in a day or two. And then once I had sold, I would try to buy back again at $20 and repeat the whole process.

Man Plans, Market Laughs

It worked as planned about half of the time. Sometimes however, the stocks kept on going up. I bought at $20, sold at $21, and then the stock went up to $25. I realized a small gain and then missed out on a big gain. Then I had to decide if I wanted to buy the stock at a much higher price or hope it came back down.

Other times, the stock would drop – I bought at $20 and soon the stock is $18. If I had 100 shares at $20, I would buy another 100 shares at $18 and lower my average cost to $19. Now, I only need the stock to get back to $19 for me to sell and break even. I would set a limit order to sell at $19 and hope I can get my money back.

If the stock would recover to $19, I’d sell. But the stock might then go to $22 and I would again have missed out on gains. Other times, the stock would continue to fall to $16, and I would buy more shares at $16 to try to average down further. But I was only increasing my losses.

At the end of the year, I’d have a lot of successful, but small trades where I had gains of 3-5%. And I would have a couple of large losses of 20%-30%, which I had magnified by buying more shares.

Lessons

Did my trading work? Sort of. I had a profit. In fact, in 2003, I was up 35% in spite of being in cash for a large number of days that year. But here are some of the things I learned:

I made 35% in 2003, but the S&P 600 small cap index was up 37% that year. All the hours I spent researching stocks and following the market daily were not productive. I would have been better off using an index fund and spending my time elsewhere. Everyone thinks they’re a genius when the market is going up.
Costs and Taxes matter. All my gains were short-term capital gains, taxed as ordinary income. With an index fund, I could hold for longer and eventually get long-term capital gains tax at 15%. Back in 2003, each trade cost $19.99 and I paid thousands in commissions that year.
No one can predict individual stocks and speculation will humble you. Investing is better than trading: diversify and remain a buy and hold owner. Prices going up and down are noise.
Let your winners run and harvest your losses. Humans are wired to do the opposite. I cut my gains short and doubled down on the losers. This comes from two behavioral biases: loss aversion and anchoring bias. I was fixated on shares getting back to even.
Simple is usually more effective than complex. Focus on the long-term, not the short-term.

Today, markets are more liquid and most bid/ask spreads today are 1-5 cents. This is much better for investors. In spite of the prevalence of index funds, however, there is still a lot of speculation on individual stocks. Every morning, I read about stocks which were up 4% or down 7% in the previous day. It’s interesting, but not an opportunity. And of course, I have written many times about how managed funds under-perform index funds. I understand the allure of picking individual stocks, but today I have realized that stock picking is less beneficial than asset allocation. Investors don’t become wealthy because of stock picking, but through saving and time in the market.

The More Things Change

The past 20 years have seen some remarkable market events. The Global Financial Crisis of 2008-2009. The Lost Decade of stocks. Zero Interest Rate Policy. Coronavirus and then 9% inflation. Everything seems to have been a “never-seen-before” moment. And yet somehow, what has always worked, still works. I look back to every low point and think, wow, that was such a great buying opportunity!

I’m looking forward to the next 20 years of financial planning. I have no idea what we will see. How will we fix Social Security and Medicare? What is going to happen with the global debt levels? Will inflation remain elevated? Will AI save the economy and create a productivity boom, or destroy jobs?

What the last 20 years have reinforced for me is that we don’t have to know what is going to happen. We save, invest, diversify, rebalance, and keep costs and taxes low. That formula has built wealth for generations. We will continue to learn and improve, but the foundation of the financial planning process is timeless. We are awash in information today, but in spite of all the available knowledge, wisdom still requires experience.

My three month old daughter is asleep in the next room as I write this. Having a child is the ultimate form of optimism. We must have confidence, patience, and faith in a positive outcome. Along the way, there will be ups and downs, but ultimately growth is headed in the right direction. Our years are determined by our days. If we manage our days right (and weeks and months), the years take care of themselves. But we have to think about the years, when deciding how we use our days.

And so it is with money. I remain very optimistic about the work we do for clients and about the remarkable opportunity for Americans to achieve financial independence. There has never been a better time to be alive. Thank you to everyone I have met along the way for a great 20 years!