Rule #1 by Phil Town is not a general personal finance book, and it’s not a book for beginning investors — it turns a lot of conventional investment wisdom on its ear. The book explores a philosophy ascribed to Columbia University’s Benjamin Graham (author of The Intelligent Investor), and popularized by Graham’s student, Warren Buffet (perhaps the most successful investor of all time).
What is The Rule? “There are only two rules of investing: Rule #1: Don’t lose money […] and Rule #2: Don’t forget Rule #1.” Town writes: “Most Americans are trapped in mutual funds that, at best, ride the waves of the market.” He believes that his method can help investors break free from these cycles.
At its heart, Town’s philosophy is simply “buy low, sell high”. He’s not pushing a get-rich-quick scheme (though at times, especially early in the book, that’s exactly how it comes across). But he’s certainly encouraging his readers to abandon traditional “get rich slowly (and surely)” techniques.
Town argues that there are three myths of investing:
You have to be an expert to manage money.
You can’t beat the market.
The best way to minimize risk is to diversify and hold for the long term.
Dollar-cost averaging will not protect you, he says. These statements may make some nervous about Town’s philosophy. In the recent Wall Street Journal article about personal finance books, one expert cautioned:
“Any book that suggests it has a new way to riches should probably be a little suspect,” says Prof. Kenneth Froewiss, a finance professor at New York University Stern School of Business. A good book about personal finance, he says, always elaborates on three simple themes: Save early, know your risk tolerance, and diversify.
Town says that “knowing you will make money comes from buying a wonderful business at an attractive price”. If you can find a wonderful business, know what it’s worth as a business, and then buy it at a discount, you will become rich. If you repeat these steps, you will become very rich. “The price of a thing is not always equal to its value,” he says, arguing against Efficient Market Theory. He points to the recent Tech Bubble as an example. (As you might expect, Town doesn’t care for A Random Walk Down Wall Street.)
Rule #1 describes how to evaluate the investment potential of a business. You want:
A company that means something to you (you know its inner workings because you’re passionate about it).
A company that has a wide moat, or protective buffer (whether this is a competitive advantage, a huge cash reserve, or an exclusive license).
A company with excellent management.
A company with a margin of safety (that is, a company priced so low that even if you miscalculate its target price, you’re not going to lose money).
Using Town’s method, an investor creates a watch list of companies that meet each of these four criteria. Each company’s financials are checked against five measures of fiscal health (return on investment, revenue growth rate, earnings-per-share growth rate, equity growth rate, and free-cash-flow growth rate) over periods of one, five, and ten years. If a company’s numbers look good, the investor develops a target price for it.
And then the waiting begins.
When the market price reaches 50% below what the calculations show it ought to be, the investor fully commits himself. Sort of. Ideally, says Town, you would hold a company’s stock forever. In reality, he argues that there are a couple of times to sell:
When a company has ceased to be wonderful.
When the market price is above the sticker price.
It is here that the Rule #1 system begins to resemble day trading. When you’ve found your ideal business, and when it passes the Rule #1 criteria and is selling at half-off the sticker price, you begin buying and selling the stock based on market conditions. You use a set of tools to make your decisions, constantly moving in and out of the stock. You’re committed to the stock for the long haul, it’s true, but you’re attempting to use market timing to maximize your returns. (Town stresses that these tools should not be used to find and value stocks, but only to time the re-purchase (or sale) of a stock to which you’re already committed.)
The book jacket incorrectly touts this as a “fifteen-minute-a-week” system (which makes it sound even more like a get-rich-quick scheme). The author, though, is clear that more time is needed to make this work. He admits that constructing a watch list takes several hours per company. It’s only after the watch list is created that the time investment declines.
I can’t recommend this book, but that’s because it’s beyond my ken. I don’t hate it. In fact, I find the ideas fascinating, even plausible, but I lack both the experience and the expertise to evaluate Town’s system. It seems to be made of equal parts sound advice and gimmicks. I’d love to read a review from somebody more firmly rooted in investment theory.
One saving grace — and it’s a big one — is that the system includes a built-in escape hatch. By using the “margin of safety”, you are buying heavily discounted stocks of good companies. It’s unlikely that they could fall further. (But not impossible.)
For more information on Rule #1, check the following web sites:
Rule One Investor is the book’s official site. It includes additional information, including handy calculators. (Which is good, because much of this system requires number-crunching.) Free registration required.
The Rule #1 Blog is author Phil Town’s personal site where he answers questions and provides additional insight. I like the fact that Town makes himself publically available. This, too, makes me less inclined to classify this as a “get rich quick” scheme.
A review of the book at Fat Pitch Financials also seems ambivalent about the system. The author writes “I really wish Phil would have shared more information about his past performance using his investment techniques.” I agree.
The moving average convergence divergence (MACD) is an indicator that shows the momentum in equity markets. It’s especially popular with traders, who use it to help them rapidly identify short-term momentum swings in a stock.
A moving average can help investors see past the noise of daily market movements to find securities trending up or down. The MACD offers another way to focus on such stocks, by showing the relationship between two moving averages.
Understanding the Moving Average
The moving average convergence divergence may sound complex, so it makes sense to start with the first part – the moving average (MA), also called the exponential moving average, or EMA. This is a very common metric with stocks, used to make sense of ever-fluctuating price data by replacing it with a regularly updated average price. This moving average can give investors a clearer idea of where a stock is trading than one that’s updated second by second.
Because the moving average reflects past prices, it is a lagging indicator. But how much the past prices factor in depends on the person setting the average. Most commonly, investors look at moving averages of 15, 20, 30, 50, 100, and 200 days, with the 50- and 200-day averages being the most widely used.
A moving average with a shorter time span will be more sensitive to price changes, while moving averages with longer time spans will fluctuate less dramatically. Generally, active traders with strategy focused on market timing favor shorter-duration moving averages.
To perform the MACD calculation, traders take the 26-day moving average of a stock and subtract it from that stock’s 12-day moving average. This calculation offers a quick temperature-check of a stock’s momentum.
While the 12-day and 26-day time spans are standard for the MACD, investors can also create their own custom MACD measurements with time spans that better fit their own particular trading tactics and investment strategies.
💡 Quick Tip: Before opening any investment account, consider what level of risk you are comfortable with. If you’re not sure, start with more conservative investments, and then adjust your portfolio as you learn more.
How to Read MACD
If a stock’s MACD is positive, that means its short-term average is higher than its long-term average, which could be a bullish indicator that stock is on an upswing. A higher MACD indicates more pronounced momentum in that upswing. On the other hand, a negative MACD indicates that a stock is trending downward.
If the positive or negative difference between the shorter-term and longer-term moving averages expands, that’s considered the MACD divergence, or the D in MACD. If they get closer, that’s considered a convergence, the C in MACD.
When the two moving averages converge, they meet at a place between the positive and negative MACD, called the zero line, or the centerline. For many traders, this MACD crossover is the sign they wait for to jump into a stock, which after losing value, is suddenly gaining value. Conversely, a stock crossing the zero line of the MACD is often taken to mean that the good times are over, leading many traders to sell at that point.
The MACD is a vital concept in technical analysis, a popular approach investors use to try to forecast the ways a stock might perform based on its current data and past movements. It involves a wide range of data and trend indicators, such as a stock’s price and trading volume, to locate opportunities and risks.
Technical analysis does not look at underlying companies, their industries, or any macroeconomic trends that might drive their success or failure. Rather, it solely analyzes the stock’s performance to find patterns and trends.
Recommended: The Pros and Cons of Momentum Trading
The MACD as a Trading Indicator
For traders, a rising MACD is a sign that a stock is being bid up. The MACD shows how quickly that’s happening.
As the short-term average rises above the longer-term average, and the two figures diverge more widely, the MACD expresses this in a simple number. When a stock is sinking, investors also want to know how fast it’s falling, as well as whether its decline is speeding up or slowing down, which they can find quickly by looking at the divergence.
A convergence is also a key indicator for many traders. As the long-term and short-term moving averages get closer to one another, it can be a sign that a given stock is either overbought or oversold for the moment. If they hold the stock, it may be time to sell the stock. But if they like the stock, and are waiting for a bargain-basement price at which to buy it, then the convergence of the two averages on the zero line may mean it’s time to start buying.
By using the MACD, traders can also compare a stock to competitors in its sector, and to the broader market, to decide whether its current price reflects its value and whether they should buy, sell, or short a stock. Because the MACD is priced out in dollars, many traders will use the percentage price oscillator, or PPO. It uses the same calculation as the MACD, but delivers its results in the form of a percentage difference between the shorter- and longer-term moving averages. As such, it allows for quicker, cleaner comparisons.
💡 Quick Tip: How to manage potential risk factors in a self directed investment account? Doing your research and employing strategies like dollar-cost averaging and diversification may help mitigate financial risk when trading stocks.
The Pros and Cons of the MACD
The MACD indicator has benefits for traders. It’s a convenient gauge of a stock’s momentum for an active, short-term trader. But it can also help a long-term investor who’s looking for the right moment to buy or sell a stock. Once an investor understands the MACD, it’s an easily interpreted data point to incorporate into their trading strategy.
investment risk. Because the MACD is a lagging indicator, it can lead to a trader staying too long in a position that’s since begun to swoon. Or, alternately, it can indicate a turnaround that’s already run the bulk of its course.
This is especially dangerous in volatile markets, when stocks can “whipsaw.” This term – named for the push-and-pull of the saw when it’s used to chop down a tree – describes the phenomenon of a stock whose price is moving in one direction, and suddenly goes sharply in the opposite direction. Whether that whipsaw movement is up or down, it can prove highly disruptive for a trader who relies too heavily on the MACD.
The Takeaway
The MACD can be a helpful metric for traders to understand and to use, in conjunction with other tools to help formulate their investing strategy.
The MACD indicator has benefits for traders. It’s a convenient gauge of a stock’s momentum for active traders. But it can also help long-term investors, too, determine when to buy and sell. It’s also a lagging indicator, which can make it tricky to use for inexperienced traders. As always, it’s best to consult with a financial professional if you’re feeling like you’re in over your head.
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This is a guest post from John Forman from The Essentials of Trading. Forman is the author of a book by the same name. He has been a trader of the stock and other markets for over 20 years, and is a professional stock market analyst for Thomson Reuters.
The wealth building potential of the stock market is enormous. I think we all realize that. The long-running debate, though, is whether one is better off investing in individual stocks (or funds that do just that), or whether it’s best to just put your money in an index fund. Most funds fail to beat the market, so it would seem index funds are the better choice.
While it is certainly true that index investing has some advantages, and some mutual funds do perform better than the indices, no index or fund will ever offer the upside potential of investing in individual stocks. It’s a matter of math.
Indices and funds include many stocks which move in all different directions. One of those stocks could double in price for the year, but because most others in the collection will do much less well, the index’s or fund’s performance will be much lower than that one stock’s gain. An investor who held that stock by itself, though, would have done quite well.
Of course you need to be able to find the stocks that will beat the indices and funds.
How Do I Find Good Stocks? The requirements for success in the stock market are much like the requirements for success in any other undertaking. Proper preparation is one of them — potentially the biggest — and a major part of preparation is having a firm objective in mind. As an investor, that normally means either seeking capital appreciation or pursuing income, or some combination. For the purposes of the discussion here, I will focus on the capital appreciation.
Another part of the equation is timeframe. I’m not talking about how long you have to retirement. There’s plenty of literature in financial planning circles about how you should structure your investments from that perspective. What I’m referring to here is how long you will expect to hold any given stock position in your portfolio.
Are you a patient long-term buy-and-hold investor who will have no problem sitting through the inevitable ups and downs of the market? Or are you someone who wants more action, doesn’t have the patience to hold stocks for years at a time, and/or cannot stomach the idea that at points your positions could go well against you for long periods of time?
You may not always be one or the other. It is, however, important to know which mode you are in when you are looking to pick good stocks. A lot of stock market players get themselves in trouble because they go into a position thinking they are one type of player only to change their minds once prices start moving.
Fundamental Analysis If you are in the first category, then your focus in trying to find good investment stocks is to look at the big picture. You are Warren Buffett. You look at the company and its management team. You look at its business and, in many cases, the broader economy. What you are trying to identify is a company which will steadily increase in value over time.
How do you do that? By thinking about what it takes for a company to grow and profit in a sustained fashion.
What do companies like that have? They have strong management teams who know what they are doing, who have a long term view and who aren’t worried about the quarter-to-quarter results or stock price fluctuations. They are in growing business sectors (or niches) where the competition isn’t so intense that no one can really make any money.
This sort of approach to looking at companies is generally referred to as fundamental analysis. Fundamentals are the underlying elements that determine the long-term growth and profitability of a company.
The idea is that you are giving your money to some really capable people and having them put it to good use in their business. Then you let them do their thing in the way they best see fit. So long as they continue to do good things and keep the business on track for positive growth in value, you stay invested. Maybe somewhere down the line you will cash out your investment. Maybe you’ll leave it to your kids or donate it to charity. Whatever the case may be, you would expect the value of your stake in the company to have grown nicely in value by that time.
Security Analysis by Benjamin Graham and David L. Dodd is the classic text for stock market fundamental analysis. You can also find a brief overview at StockCharts.com.
Technical Analysis Now, if you are in the second category where you’re not just going to buy a stock and lock it away, you need to think more specifically about your holding period. By this I don’t mean to imply that you will hold a stock for an exact period of time and that’s it. I just mean you should have an idea of how long you would expect to be in the position. That could still be years, or it could be months or weeks.
The advantage of the long-term investor is that they need not worry about the fluctuations in the price of the stock. They are investing on the basis of the long-term growth of the company with the assumption that the stock price will generally follow along at about the same pace.
Less long-term players (often referred to as traders) have to be cognizant of the intermediate and shorter-term price action. Generally speaking, the shorter your expected holding time horizon, the more you will have to focus on the price action. This is because the fundamentals mentioned above are usually slow moving elements which play out over the longer timeframes. They don’t change quickly, so they can’t really influence short-term price movements much.
What I mean by that is stock prices can move in the short-term on a great many factors. It could be news, economic data, changes in interest rates, the general market environment, and lots of other things. Just because a company is making money hand over fist doesn’t mean the stock price will be rising. If the company continues to do that, the stock will probably move higher eventually, but in the meantime other factors could cause it to go sideways or to even fall. This is something that baffles a lot of new investors.
Focusing mostly on price moves you into the realm of technical analysis. This approach seeks to identify patterns of price movement in the market for the purposes of determining likely future direction. This is also referred to as market timing, which basically means seeking to define good points at which to buy and sell. A lot of stock investors use fundamental analysis to find good companies, then use technical analysis to try to pick the best time to buy the stock.
Technical Analysis of the Financial Markets is widely considered the ultimate source on the subject. StockCharts.com offers an introduction to technical analysis.
Value Investing To this point you’ll notice that I haven’t used the term value investing yet. Many people would refer to Warren Buffett as a value investor, and as such would put value investing in the long-term investing category.
Value investing need not be a “buy it and bury it” type of approach, however. In fact, I’d guess that most people consider it the process of identifying stocks trading out of line with the value of the company in question. They use any number of metrics to determine what a company’s stock should be worth. If the stock isn’t close to that value, they will either buy it or sell it in expectation that it will eventually get back in line. In most cases, once that happens, the stock position will be exited.
This probably all sounds very familiar. You’ve no doubt heard of Wall Street analysts putting out price targets and ratings and such. They generally use fundamental analysis to come up with what they think is the value of the company right now (adjusting it for new information, of course). Then they look at current price to see how it matches up with what their valuation calculations tell them.
If you’d like to learn more about value investing, consider Benjamin Graham’s classic, The Intelligent Investor. The Motley Fool has an interview with Bruce Greenwald about the three steps of value investing.
It Takes Work Regardless which type of stock market player you are, there are no approaches which don’t require effort on your part to pick the good stocks. Even if you have someone giving you recommendations, you should still be doing your own due diligence to see if they really fit in with what you are trying to do in the market.
Also keep in mind that no matter what timeframe investing/trading you do, you should always take the longer-term view. It’s extremely unlikely that any one stock position is going to make you rich in a short period of time. If you try to score it big on any one trade you’re probably going to end up losing a lot of money. Wealth accumulation in the markets is best sought by steady growth, putting the power of compounding to work in your favor.
“The first rule of investing is don’t lose money; the second rule is don’t forget rule number one.” — Warren Buffett
At the end of March, I asked you what topics you’d like to see covered during Financial Literacy Month. I received many great suggestions, and will continue to fulfill requests not just in April, but for months to come. One comment especially caught my eye. Kenneth F. LaVoie III wrote:
Never again will I be in a position to lose 50% of my money. There must be a way to see the Big Picture and lighten up on areas that are over-valued, but still enjoy an average return at least approaching that of the market as a whole…I’d love to hear some simple strategies that require a little thought, and don’t just focus on keeping a lot of money in cash and short term bonds.
It sounds to me as if Ken is asking about defensive investing, which is actually something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. When I was younger, my investments were mostly speculative. They were gambles. I wanted to earn huge returns — and I wanted them today. Even two years ago, I was investing in Countrywide and The Sharper Image.
But as I’ve built wealth and become better educated about money, I’ve become a defensive investor. I’ve become less interested in quick gains. Last year’s market collapse was another shock to the system, not just for me but for many others. We’ve realized that our risk tolerance isn’t as high as we once thought it was.
Risk tolerance is the degree to which you, as an investor, are willing to accept uncertainty — and possible loss — in the investments that you make. If you have a high risk tolerance, you’re willing to accept large fluctuations in your investment returns in exchange for the possibility of large gains. If you have a low risk tolerance, you’d rather your return was constant.
More and more, I’ve become a fan of index funds — mutual funds built to track the broad movements of the stock market. They don’t outperform the market, but they don’t underperform it, either. To learn more about index funds, I’ve begun to attend the quarterly meetings of the local Diehards group.
The Diehards are fans of John Bogle, who founded The Vanguard Group, and who is considered the father of index funds. The Diehards mostly hang out in an internet discussion forum, but from time-to-time they meet in groups around the country to discuss investing.
At the last meeting, we took turns describing our current asset allocations and what we’ve done to respond to the faltering economy. It was no surprise that most people hadn’t done much to change their investing strategies. What was surprising is that although everyone was a fan of John Bogle, I was the only one whose portfolio was composed primarily of index funds.
Each member of the Portland Diehards group has his own approach to investing. Many focus on real estate. But one man’s choice especially appealed to me. Craig told the group that he has based his asset allocation on Harry Browne‘s “Permanent Portfolio”.
Asset allocation is the division of money among different types of investments. The classic example is the basic 60/40 split: 60% invested in stocks and 40% in bonds. “Asset allocation” is just a fancy way of saying “the things in which I’ve invested”.
After listening to Craig’s explanation of the Permanent Portfolio, I picked up Harry Browne’s little book, Fail-Safe Investing. Browne divides investment money into two categories:
Money you cannot afford to lose.
Money you can afford to lose.
For the former, Browne recommends investing in a “permanent portfolio” that provides three key features: safety, stability, and simplicity. He argues that your permanent portfolio should protect you against all economic futures while also providing steady performance. It should also be easy to implement. (For the money you can afford to lose, Browne suggests a “variable portfolio”, with which you can do anything you want — even invest in Beanie Babies!)
There are many ways to approach safe, steady investing, but Brown has some specific recommendations for his own Permanent Portfolio:
25% in U.S. stocks, to provide a strong return during times of prosperity. For this portion of the portfolio, Browne recommends a basic S&P 500 index fund such as VFINX or FSKMX.
25% in long-term U.S. Treasury bonds, which do well during prosperity and during deflation (but which do poorly during other economic cycles).
25% in cash in order to hedge against periods of “tight money” or recession. In this case, “cash” means a money-market fund. (Note that our current recession is abnormal because money actually isn’t tight — interest rates are very low.)
25% in precious metals (gold, specifically) in order to provide protection during periods of inflation. Browne recommends gold bullion coins.
Because this asset allocation is diversified, the entire portfolio performs well under most circumstances. Browne writes:
The portfolio’s safety is assured by the contrasting qualities of the four investments — which ensure that any event that damages one investment should be good for one or more of the others. And no investment, even at its worst, can devastate the portfolio — no matter what surprises lurk around the corner — because no investment has more than 25% of your capital.
To use the Permanent Portfolio, you simply divide your capital into four equal chunks, one for each asset class. Once each year, you rebalance the portfolio. If any part of the portfolio has dropped to less than 15% or grown to over 35% of the total, then you reset all four segments to 25%. That’s it. That’s all the work involved.
Browne’s Permanent Portfolio is unlike anything I’ve ever considered before, but I have to admit: I like it. A lot. It has a distinct “get rich slowly” feel to it. That is, this portfolio is not designed to earn lots of money; it’s designed to not lose money.
What’s more, the Permanent Portfolio is based on the smart investment behaviors we’ve explored before. It’s a passive strategy built on diversification. It doesn’t use market timing. It’s a defensive investment strategy that also happens to produce a decent return.
Diversification is often mentioned with asset allocation, and for good reason. Diversification is the process of investing in many different things, of not putting all of your eggs in one basket. Studies have shown repeatedly that by investing in different types of assets that aren’t correlated (i.e. do not move the same way at the same time), investors can reduce risk while maintaining (and sometimes increasing) return. This is the power of diversification.
All of this is a long way of saying that, like Kenneth F. LaVoie III, I too am interested in reducing my risk while maintaining a decent return. I understand that, in general, risk and return are intertwined. If you want maximum possible returns, you must accept great risk. If you want no risk, you will receive meager returns. But as William Bernstein demonstrates in The Four Pillars of Investing [my review], diversification can lower risk while increasing return.
To read more about the Permanent Portfolio, check out the following articles:
I should also point out that there’s actually a mutual fund built around the concept of the Permanent Portfolio. PRPFX has an impressive record, though one based on less than a decade of data.
Note: Just because I am giving serious consideration to the Permanent Portfolio does not mean that you should do the same. Please base your investment decisions on your personal goals and psychology, not on my personal goals and psychology.
What if you could tame long-term inflation? Right now, this is one of the biggest questions in financial circles. After nearly 40 years of very stable money, in 2021 and 2022 prices surged. For the first time in a generation, inflation seriously beat the Federal Reserve’s 2% benchmark.
As of July 2023, this immediate problem appears to be easing somewhat. But investors as a group are understandably spooked. Was last summer’s 9% inflation rate a one-shot problem brought on by the unique conditions of a pandemic economy, massive federal spending and a destabilizing war? Or will inflation return as a cyclical issue?
Consider working with a financial advisor to build an investment portfolio that accounts for inflation.
Financial advisor and author Allan Roth of ETF.com thinks that investors would be wise to prepare in case inflation remains high, or even surges back to 2022 levels. This is a particular risk, he warns, for retirees without the luxury of new wages that keep pace with higher prices.
What if, he writes, inflation averages 5% during your retirement? Over the course of 20 years, a retiree who started out withdrawing $4,000 per year from a given account would need to increase those withdrawals to $10,613 just to keep up with prices. This could easily shatter carefully planned finances.
To fix this, Roth writes, “I built and purchased a 30-year TIPS ladder with roughly $1 million of my own money… By buying as close as possible to bonds maturing each year, I was able to create a 30-year cash flow paying me an inflation-adjusted average of $43,800, or 4.38% annually.”
In other words, by building a TIPS ladder fund, Roth argues that he has added a stable source of inflation-protected income to his retirement fund. A TIPS ladder fund could help investors hedge against both market risks and inflation. While not explicitly a “growth” strategy, it could be a very strong security-oriented strategy for retirees. Here’s how it works.
How a TIPS Ladder Fund Works
A ladder fund is a portfolio of maturing assets, like bonds or CDs, built around staggered maturity dates. For example, you might buy a portfolio with bonds that mature in 5, 10, 15 and 20 years. This fund would “ladder,” as the bonds would mature in stages like the rungs of a ladder, as opposed to all at once.
The idea behind a ladder fund is to hedge against timing risk. For example, say you had invested in bonds in 2019, when rates were extremely low. A portfolio of long-term assets might be stuck with low-value, low-yield assets. A ladder fund, on the other hand, would have short-term bonds. As those assets mature, you could collect back your principal and invest in new, higher-interest assets.
A TIPS bond, or Treasury Inflation Protected Security, is a marketable Treasury asset built to correct for inflation. Each month the Treasury adjusts the underlying principal on all TIPS bonds based on the Consumer Price Index. When the bond matures, the holder receives the greater of either the bond’s original value or its inflation-adjusted value. Since the bond calculates interest based on its underlying principal, this means that the asset’s periodic interest payments will also increase based on inflation.
A TIPS ladder fund, as suggested by Roth, is a portfolio built out of TIPS bonds with staggered maturity dates. This, he argues, would provide a source of inflation-protected income, due to the structure of a TIPS bond, while also giving investors a hedge against market timing risks due to the periodic maturity of the ladder.
Can TIPS Ladders Protect Your Money From Inflation?
While a niche and technical idea, the TIPS ladder fund has been well received. Morningstar’s John Rekenthaler writes that it can potentially offer investors a strong supplement to more traditional assets like stocks and annuities.
“TIPS ladders take the concept of bond ladders a giant leap further,” Rekenthaler writes. “Whereas traditional ladders merely reduce investment risk, TIPS ladders eliminate the possibility entirely. In that they are unique. Conventional Treasuries face no conceivable credit risk, but they certainly court inflation risk… In contrast, every inflation-adjusted penny from a TIPS ladder is known in advance.”
Thanks to the combination of bond interest payments and inflation adjustment, you can know exactly what this portfolio will pay out for its entire lifetime. Thanks to its nature as a government asset, you can know that this portfolio will not default. That’s about as much security as anyone can ask for.
Does this mean that TIPS ladders will be an investor’s forever home? Not entirely, as there are two main catches to this portfolio. First, a TIPS ladder is difficult and expensive to construct, with relatively marginal yields on low-value transactions. As a result, most retail investors won’t have the skill set or capital to build a useful TIPS ladder on their own.
This is why both Rekenthaler and Roth recommend an ETF that offers this structure. A large-scale fund, built and managed by professional investors, could solve both the complexity and the funding problems. Retail investors could buy in using the flexibility of the ETF structure, making this far more practical for them.
Second, a TIPS ladder still offers government interest rates. The reliability of a Treasury asset comes at the cost of lower returns relative to the market at large, even if those returns are inflation protected. This is why Rekenthaler points out that a TIPS ladder should be treated as a specialized asset rather than an all-purpose investment.
“The concept is unsuited for workers,” he writes, “as they attempt to grow their assets rather than spend them… However, to the extent that Social Security payments fail to meet a retiree’s fixed expenses, a TIPS ladder fund would fill the gap – more neatly, I think, than any conceivable competitor.”
A TIPS ladder might not help you build the retirement account that you need. For that, higher-value assets like stocks will probably do better. But once you approach retirement, it might help you build exactly the kind of security that you need. It’s a good investment to keep an eye out for.
Inflation Investing Tips
A financial advisor can help you build a comprehensive investing plan. Finding a financial advisor doesn’t have to be hard. SmartAsset’s free tool matches you with up to three vetted financial advisors who serve your area, and you can have a free introductory call with your advisor matches to decide which one you feel is right for you. If you’re ready to find an advisor who can help you achieve your financial goals, get started now.
Check out SmartAsset’s inflation calculator to get a quick estimate of the buying power of a dollar over time.
Eric Reed
Eric Reed is a freelance journalist who specializes in economics, policy and global issues, with substantial coverage of finance and personal finance. He has contributed to outlets including The Street, CNBC, Glassdoor and Consumer Reports. Eric’s work focuses on the human impact of abstract issues, emphasizing analytical journalism that helps readers more fully understand their world and their money. He has reported from more than a dozen countries, with datelines that include Sao Paolo, Brazil; Phnom Penh, Cambodia; and Athens, Greece. A former attorney, before becoming a journalist Eric worked in securities litigation and white collar criminal defense with a pro bono specialty in human trafficking issues. He graduated from the University of Michigan Law School and can be found any given Saturday in the fall cheering on his Wolverines.
Today’s Millennials face challenges unique to their generation. With the cost of education on the rise, setting money aside for the future can be challenging.
That’s where Unifimoney can help. Combining banking and investing, you’ll get the all-in-one platform you need to save, as well as spend and invest with a unique combination of automation and easy access to alternative assets including cryptocurrencies and precious metals.
Ben Soppitt founded Unifimoney to make it easier for Millennials to manage their money and protect their long-term wealth.
What’s Ahead:
Why Unifimoney?
Based in San Francisco, Unifimoney serves the banking needs of young professionals in the United States. From high-yield checking, a robust multi-asset investment, a range of partner services including insurance and loans, and a credit card (launching in August!) – you can really manage most, if not all of your money in one app.
Unifmoney also has auto-transfer rules that you can set up to automatically move money from your old bank to your Unifimoney account on a schedule you determine.
But where Unifimoney really shines through is in its investment platform and automation features. The app includes both passive (robo) investing and active commission-free trading, 37 cryptocurrencies with more being added regularly, and even precious metals; gold, silver, or platinum can be delivered. The robo product builds a portfolio that fits your own goals and risk tolerance level.
Meet Unifimoney CEO – Ben Soppitt
Ben Soppitt has a long history in fintech leadership, including roles with Samsung Pay, Fitbit Pay, and Visa. He founded Unifimoney in 2019 and continues to serve as its CEO.
In addition to his work with Unifimoney, Ben is a member of the Forbes Business Council, an invitation-only organization for small and midsized business owners. He also performed a fellowship at On Deck, an accelerator that helps top talent accelerate their careers.
Recently, we spoke with Ben about his vision for Unifimoney and where he sees the field of finance going in the coming years. He also had a few great insights about personal finance for the Millennial generation.
Money Under 30’s interview with Ben Soppitt
What drove you to start Unifimoney? Do share any backstory about naming your company Unifimoney.
I had been in the financial services business for over two decades and witnessed the rapid increase in consumer Fintech companies launching bringing innovation, choice, and value to consumers. But I noticed a few things that the industry was not solving for and the wasted value to consumers was massive – over $20 trillion, money that could be going back to consumers and the wider economy.
These included ignoring the needs of mass affluent consumers including young professionals. These customers are in a very challenging position – they are high-earning but also high-debt from an extended period in education. They often live in high-tax and high-price areas like major cities. They have busy, stressful, and demanding jobs, and they have a lot going on in their lives. Managing money well is rarely high on their list of things to do, and it’s decisions that are made or more often not made at that time that can have an impact many years later – the opportunity cost of not managing your money is paid in the future and not today.
The other thing I noticed was that most Fintechs were solving for very specific and discrete parts of the financial ecosystem – active investing, Robo investing, cryptocurrencies trading, mortgages, loans, banking, etc., ironically with so many apps it actually makes it harder to manage your money than easier and that work falls on the consumer. Humans are not, on the whole, prepared to do hard, manual, repetitive work on a sustained basis, especially when the payoff may be decades in the future, so we put it off and that’s what managing your money can require. The result is that almost all mass affluent consumers suffer from three sins in managing their money:
Having too much money held in cash at a Big Brand Bank that pays little or no interest.
Having a credit card that does not maximize your return on spend.
Not dollar-cost averaging (in fact, less than 30% of Millennials are investing in the stock market at all).
If these were solved for the entire Millennial generation, it would create through their working lives and the power of compound interest over $20 trillion dollars of value by the time they retire. Solving for this is what we want to do at Unifimoney, and we do it through automation and product design so that our customers are automatically and by default solving for the three sins of personal finance and ensuring their money is working as hard for them as they do to earn it in the first place.
What sets Unifimoney apart from other investing apps?
We are an all-in-one app where you can manage most if not all of your investing and money management needs. We use automation to remove the manual work involved in managing money on a day-to-day basis. We have a comprehensive investment platform including Robo investing, Self Managed Commission Free trading, over 30 cryptocurrencies, and precious metals. We support fractional investing in equities and ETFs, crypto, and precious metals so any customer can get going with just a few dollars. We intend to progressively add more alternative investment assets over time like collectibles.
We have a full banking service – a hybrid high-interest checking account and are launching a credit card soon. This will be the only credit card in the world that pays rewards as Bitcoin, gold, or equities.
More important than the features and product functions, though, is that we enable our customers to truly automate their money. You can set rules to transfers funds automatically from your old banking institution into Unifimoney – move your money not your bank, we recognize that is a hassle. You can auto-invest any amount (the minimum is $25) each month into your Robo and trade in crypto, metals, and equities to the maximum in your account.
Deposit interest and credit card cash back are automatically rolled up and deposited into your Robo fund – unless gold or Bitcoin is selected for the credit card (this can be changed each billing cycle). We want to make saving and investing as easy and effortless as paying for an Uber.
You’ve shared that Unifimoney’s San Francisco-based team speaks 7 languages; tell us more!
We are a fully distributed team with both U.S. and international team members. At the last count, we can collectively speak seven languages. The Founders Ben and Ed are British and British/Australian respectively but both living in San Francisco. Whilst the U.S. is in many respects the leading Fintech market in the world, there are learnings and experiences from other markets that help inform our product design. Credit Cards, for example, is a very commoditized business in the U.S. – with almost no innovation in 30 years. Other markets in Asia and Europe are doing far more interesting things with Credit Card proposition design.
What advice do you have for a Gen Z and/or Millennial who hasn’t started investing at all yet but is interested in learning?
A few innovations have made the path to investing very easy, low cost and low risk. Fractional investing means you can buy into company stocks (or crypto or gold) for just a few dollars, you are buying a fraction of a share not the whole share. This reduces the barriers to entry considerably. Commission-free trading likewise makes it low cost to trade. Robo platforms can help create a portfolio based on your own risk profile, and auto invest means that you can set a schedule to invest even a very small amount of money regularly.
The average age to start saving for retirement is 32 in the U.S. – meaning for most, they have lost a decade of compound growth. Most people understand conceptually how compound growth but it’s hard to really imagine its power. We all almost all forget or ignore that compounding increases both our good decisions and our bad. Losing the first 10 years of your 30-40 year investing potential is a very hard blow indeed – these are the most important years – the early ones with the most compounding to benefit from.
When looking for a bank, what advice do you give Gen Z and Millennials? What features should they prioritize?
Well, we are a little biased to be fair.
Some things to consider we would suggest:
Whose interests are the banks really being run for? Customers vs Shareholders
The values of the institution should be considered.
How the institution is going to actually help you increase your wealth.
Try and actively think beyond the marketing – the top 10 Big Brand Banks spend over $15 billion a year on marketing – they are influencing your judgment, whether you realize it or not.
Be aggressively rational – e.g., metals credit cards are irrational and deflect focus from what you should really be looking at and assessing.
Unifimoney offers an all-in-one financial management solution. Do you find many of your members use it for all their banking needs, including checking and savings?
We are a complex answer to a complex problem – how to manage your money better without effort so it takes time for customers to really understand what we do plus we are still building and developing the platform.
We don’t expect our customers to give up their old bank and move to us immediately. It’s why we have created ways to automate funds flow from your old bank to Unifimoney. You don’t have to move bank, just the money.
We see two categories of customers so far – those who create an account, fund a few thousand dollars and then spend time learning about the services and increasing their funding over time. The second category is moving over larger portfolios of $100-500K either into the Robo or Self Managed platform. We hope our customers will develop and evolve alongside us, and we actively seek their feedback and incorporate that into our design roadmap.
Everyone is talking about cryptocurrency. How do you see digital currencies changing the financial landscape over the next decade?
It is clear we believe that blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies have vast future potential in many dimensions of life. Without any doubt, cryptocurrencies are a highly volatile investment choice, and we recommend that they are treated as such.
There are a few philosophies we believe largely hold true in investing for most people most of the time:
Spend less than you make.
Invest what you can.
Maintain a cash cushion appropriate to your needs.
The 85:15 ratio – 85% of your investments should be in a highly diversified portfolio matching your individual risk profile. 5-15% can be used for more high risk/high reward investments if you feel compelled to actively trade.
Dollar-cost average to manage market timing risk.
Cryptocurrencies and precious metals and indeed all forms of alternative asset we think have a role in diversification and the high risk 5-15% part of your active investing if that is of interest to you.
Equally important alternative assets – be they wine, sports memorabilia, collectibles, cryptocurrencies, gold coins, etc., tend to be much more interesting and engaging than ETFs for example.
They are a great way to get people interested in engaging in their wealth journey, and that is an important component we think to consider as well.
You did a fellowship with an accelerator called On Deck. What was that experience like? How has it helped you as you lead your company?
I did – it was early on in our journey, and it’s a community of Founders from all industries and levels of experience and career change. Coming out of a 20+ year corporate career, it was incredibly powerful and energizing to be around such a diverse group of people, all embarking on similar journeys to start new projects and companies that they believe so strongly in. I am still an active member of the online community and try and participate and support the community by giving back whatever I can. I have gravitated to more Fintech founders, which is natural, but I recently worked with a Founder from On Deck working on an education startup – teaching kids mechanical engineering skills starting with 3D Printing tech. My kids and I were part of his pilot.
As a business leader in a competitive market, what advice do you have for aspiring entrepreneurs?
I think there is a lot more randomness and luck involved that is generally talked about. Accepting that is very helpful. The most powerful force, though, I believe is serendipity “the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way”.
As the old saying goes, the harder I work, the luckier I am. I work hard at having as many interactions with as wide a group of people as I can, and I find that the most powerful relationships often come from the most unlikely places and people, and they compound over time. Like money – smaller positive changes and actions done frequently compound to be very powerful. Same with relationships and people.
What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced in your career, and what did you learn from it?
I have been incredibly fortunate to have had the opportunity to travel and work in many countries during my career, including the UK, Kazakhstan, Indonesia, Singapore, and now the U.S. Very diverse environments and cultures, but I have often found the biggest challenge is always when people’s values and goals are not aligned. It’s hard to achieve that in a big corporate environment at the best of times, and some companies do it better than others. But when people are aligned, there is almost nothing that cannot be achieved.
Who in your life has been the most instrumental in teaching you about money management?
My Father who was very good with money, very disciplined, and thought long term – and my Mother who was truly awful with it. My parents divorced at an early age, so I saw the two paths evolve over time and in parallel to their natural conclusions. A hard and long lesson to be sure.
I have seen the long-term effects on physical and mental health and quality of life that money stress causes, and I will do anything I can to help as many people as possible avoid that fate.
What’s the best advice you’ve received (not necessarily money-related) that has shaped how you lead your life?
I am still learning – when I have reached a conclusion I will most assuredly let you know.
What’s your top personal finance tip?
Spend less than you earn, and invest the rest.
What is the financial book/website/podcast that has most influenced you?
I am really diverse in my personal finance media in part because so few of them can agree on really core things, so I try and read/watch as much as I can, and it’s a never-ending quest of learning, e.g. active vs passive, growth vs value, crypto vs gold, etc., but I take it all with a pinch of salt – I am personally very much following the boring but systematic approach in my investing whilst dipping into new things to learn and for fun – I recently invested in gold for the first time (via Unifimoney) and also sports collectibles via a third-party app just to learn.
The problem with a lot of financial media is that it’s interesting/informative, sometimes amusing, but ultimately fails because most people don’t act on it. The fact that less than 30% of Millennials are invested in the stock market is a shocking statistic to me, even lower below aged 30.
We as an industry collectively need to solve for the wasted trillions that are caused by poor financial management, and we are not there yet.
What piece of wisdom would you give your 20-year-old self about managing money?
Spend less than you earn, and invest the rest. I made my first equity investment at age 14 during Maggie Thatcher’s privatization of the UK’s government-owned utilities. I think it was in British Gas. I doubled my money.
I also placed my first bet around the same time, I think it was on the Grand National Horse race – held once a year in the UK. I lost all my money. That was a great lesson.
Summary
Unifimoney is a full-service financial platform offering all the tools necessary to efficiently manage your money. You’ll not only have the support you need to build a strong portfolio, but you’ll also learn positive financial habits that will carry you through the rest of your life.
This post may contain affiliate links, which helps us to continue providing relevant content and we receive a small commission at no cost to you. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. Please read the full disclosure here.
If you have been trading for a while, then there is a good chance that you have made some trading mistakes along the way.
Unfortunately, it is part of learning how to trade.
After all, trading is a skill that takes time to learn.
Trading mistakes are part of the learning process. I know that sucks to hear, but it is the truth.
The outcome goal is to learn from those trading mistakes.
Then, you can realize what you did wrong so you do not repeat those same mistakes.
However, more than not, it is more common to repeat the same mistake over and over again.
If you are ready to recognize trading errors and learn how to overcome them, then keep digging in. Take notes and adjust your trading plan accordingly.
We will cover emotional trading mistakes, technical trading errors, and option trading mistakes.
What Are Trading Mistakes?
Trading mistakes are errors made by traders when you enter trades, either to purchase stocks or options.
More than likely, you will see the same type of trading error happening over and over again.
Trading mistakes are very common, but they do not have to lead to complete panic.
In order to minimize the chances of making a costly mistake, traders should adhere to their trading strategy. Additionally, traders should always trade with a clear head and stay disciplined.
There are plenty of trading mistakes you can avoid by being smart and adjusting your trading plan where needed.
Why Understanding Trading Mistakes Is Important for Long-term Success
Trading mistakes are the result of traders taking losing trades, which can result in poor overall performance.
Mistakes that occur during trading often include not paying attention to the market, not understanding risk, not having a well-thought out trading strategy, and being bad at managing the trade.
Whatever the reason, trading errors occur and it is how we react to them that matters.
Long-term success in trading is not a goal that can be accomplished overnight.
Achieving long-term success with active trading requires patience, discipline, and practice.
It is easy to get caught up in day-to-day successes and forget to commit to a long-term plan. As traders, it is important to be able to recognize our mistakes so that we can learn from them and move forward.
Top 5 Trading Mistakes
As you will see, we compiled a long list of trading mistakes. Each trader will see some of those trading errors in themselves. Some are small trading mistakes while others are detrimental.
First, we are going to focus on the top five trading mistakes first. This will make or break your success as a trader.
The following are five common trading mistakes that traders make and how to avoid them.
#1 – No Trading Plan
Trading without a plan means you enter a trade without knowing your next step.
No trading plan means that traders are not able to set clear goals, establish risk-reward ratios, and avoid common pitfalls that can occur during a trade. This makes it difficult for traders to know when they should be buying, selling, or holding.
Trading without a plan is risky because it can lead to losses that are much higher than they need to be.
When starting out in trading, it is important to remember that we can only focus on what we can control. This means that we should not worry about things we cannot change, such as the past or the behavior of other traders. Instead, we should form a trading plan and stick to it so that we can succeed in the long run.
Creating your trading plan will happen with many revisions. The goal of the trading plan is to set your overall strategy for trading.
Also, you need to have a specific trading strategy for each trade you enter.
Avoid by: Spending time to develop a trading plan. Revise as needed. Stick to it.
#2 – Risk Management Plan is Missing
A risk management plan is essential for traders and it should be included in any trading plan.
Without a risk management plan, traders are more likely to make emotional decisions that can lead to costly mistakes. For many traders, this is the hardest thing for them to manage.
It is possible to create a risk management plan as your overall trading plan.
In your risk management plan, you must decide (in advance) how much money you are willing to lose based on the amount of profit you perceive to make. For instance, you are willing to risk $300 in order to make $1000.
Many day traders focus on a 2:1 reward-to-risk ratio. Personally, I look for stronger reward-to-risk ratios greater than 3:1.
Avoid by: Understand how risk is a part of making a profit. Set your risk tolerance and do not deviate from it.
#3 – Not Keeping a Trading Journal
One of the most important aspects of successful trading is keeping a journal.
This not only helps you keep track of your trades and performance, but it can also help you remember what worked and what did not. Journaling is so helpful and such an overlooked task.
Your trading journal is the perfect place to take notes, keep track of your wins and losses, and record market movements so that you can learn from past mistakes.
At the end of every trading session, you should take some time to analyze your trades.
What went well?
What didn’t go well?
Why did you make that particular trade?
What was your entry strategy?
What was your exit strategy?
Where was the overall market momentum?
Did you control your emotions?
What grade would you give yourself?
This analysis is important so that you can learn from your mistakes and improve your trading skills. Stay motivated to continue learning about trading and keep more profit.
Avoid by: Start journaling. Spend time after exiting a trade and the market day to understand what happen and why you did a certain trade.
#4 – Watching Too Many Stocks
Watching too many stocks can lead to a decrease in returns and overall confusion on what is happening with your watchlist.
As a result, it is important to be selective.
The same can be said of stock scanners. If you are watching too many variables and possibilities, you can quickly become overwhelmed.
When you develop your trading plan, you need to decide how you find stocks.
Personally, I prefer to focus on a handful of stocks and a few key metrics. Then, watch them closely and trade accordingly.
As a new trader, I would pick about 5-10 stocks to analyze.
Avoid by: Revise your watchlist to half what you are currently watching.
#5 – Actually Exiting Trade as Planned
Above we talked about creating a trading plan and having a trading strategy for each trade taken.
But, the trading mistake happens when you do not exit the trade as planned.
This could be because of “hopemium” that the stock price will recover and you will get back your loss.
Our “hopemium” is that the stock price keeps rising and you will make more money.
Either one can be damaging to your trading account.
You created a plan. As a disciplined trader, you must follow your plan either to maximize your current profit or protect your risk against further losses.
Avoid by: Exiting at your set targets. Period.
12 Typical Emotional Trading Errors
Trading is 80% mental and 20% execution. Okay, I am not sure that there is an official study to back it up. But, I do know as a trader that emotions play heavily into your overall profit.
The typical emotional trading errors that traders make when they are in a trade are overconfidence, jumping into trades before the proper analysis is completed, and inability to take losses.
This is where most of the trading mistakes are made.
When first starting out in trading, it is easy to get caught up in the prospect of making a lot of money quickly. However, most traders find that trading is not easy to do and make common emotional trading errors.
Let’s dig into these emotional mistakes first and then we will follow up on the technical trading mistakes.
1. Letting emotions impair decision making
Emotions are an important part of decision-making, but it can be dangerous to allow them to influence our decisions. We should also take into account that emotions can often lead us astray.
It is clear that emotional trading can lead to bad decision making and, ultimately, financial losses.
When investors let their emotions take over, they are not thinking logically and may make impulsive decisions. For example, they may sell stocks when the market is down in order to avoid further losses, even though the stock may rebound soon after.
In order to be successful traders, it is important to stay calm and rational when making decisions.
Overcome by: Stick to your trading plan and take emotion out of the equation.
2. Unrealistic Profit Expectations
You go into every single trade expecting a home run! Enough money to achieve your dreams overnight!
These types of profit expectations will have you throwing your risk management plan out of the window and set you up for failure with greed, overconfidence, and impatience.
Be realistic about your expectations with trading activity.
Overcome by: Go for base hits. Small consistent wins.
3. Greed
Greed is a deep-seated need for more profit without regard to the chart or market conditions.
The common rationale is hopefully the stock will go up. Typically, you hold your position too long and end up losing some of your gains.
Greed can manifest in many different ways, and people with greed often neglect their own needs in order to attain more.
Overcome by: Set an OCO bracket to exit the trade at your specified level. Take you out of the equation.
4. Fear of Missing Out (FOMO)
You fear that you missed out on a trade, so you decide to jump in. As a result, you are risking more than you should.
This trading mistake is common, especially with online trading communities.
As a result, you may buy at the high and watch the stock reverse.
Overcome by: Realize that there will be missed opportunities. That is part of the game. There will always be another chance.
5. Fear
In many cases, fear is a reaction to why or why not we enter a trade.
For any trader, they may become frozen unable able to make a decision as their mind is wrapped in fear. At the same time, they are either missing out on potential profits or unable to exit a trade due to mounting losses.
Overcome by: This is a real emotion that you must overcome. Take the time and read resources to help you overcome being paralyzed by fear.
6. Overconfidence after a profitable trade
The overconfidence that comes with success can lead to a loss of profits.
When a trader has a winning position, they may become overconfident and make bad decisions because of the previously profitable trade.
For example, they may not take their profits off the table when there is an opportunity to do so or increase their position size when they should be taking profits. This could lead to them losing all of their winnings and more.
Overcome by: Take a break from trading for a few days or a week after a big win.
7. Entering a Trade Based on Your Gut
The process of entering a trade based on your gut is, essentially, following your “gut feeling” and buying or selling shares after the market opens. This is seen as a more risky and less profitable strategy than following a more traditional market timing approach.
Trading is all about making calculated decisions and sticking to a plan.
Trading based on your gut feeling or emotions will only lead to costly mistakes.
Overcome by: Before entering into any trade, make sure you have a solid strategy in place and know all the rules. Only then should you start trading.
8. Not reviewing trades
Not reviewing trades is a common problem for many traders. Traders who don’t review their trades tend to be more likely to make mistakes in their trading and over-trade, which can result in losses.
You will make the same mistake over and over again until you realize the root of the problem.
This is how you move from a losing average to a winning percentage.
Overcome by: Let your journal be your friend. Document everything including your emotions.
9. Following the Herd
Many people enjoy following the herd with stock trading, especially online platforms on Reddit, Discord, or Twitter.
You may decide to follow a certain group of people in order to be fed stock picks or updates.
This can be risky because there is no sound foundation to base your trade upon.
Overcome by: Trade your style and let that fit you.
10. The Danger of Over-Confidence
The “beginner’s luck” experienced by some novice traders may lead them to believe that trading is the proverbial road to quick riches.
Over-confidence is the belief that one’s abilities, knowledge, or qualities are better than average.
This over-confidence is a risk factor for certain types of mistakes and other negative outcomes as it leads to complacency, a lack of preparation, and an overestimation of one’s abilities.
Overcome by: Realize your limitations and watch for overconfidence to appear.
11. The Importance of Accepting Losses
Losses are always a part of trading life, but they can be overwhelming when they occur.
It is important to recognize that losses are in fact an inevitable part of growth and development as a trader.
Overcome by: Journal all of your losses. Look for patterns to appear. Adjust your trading strategy as appropriate.
12. Quit Your Job Too Fast
Quitting your job too fast is not a good idea, as it will force you to place trades that may not be the best set-ups.
Day trading can be a very risky venture, and it is possible to lose everything you have invested.
It is important to be aware of the risks before getting started. More importantly, do not quit your job too fast. This can lead to losses in your investments and could potentially put you in a worse financial situation than you were before.
Overcome by: Keep trading as a side hustle. Hone your trading skills and build up a reserve fund that will cover your monthly expenses. You will know when you are prepared to leave your 9-5.
Common Mistakes in Stock Trading
According to a study by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, technical trading mistakes are actually fairly common among individual investors.
Mistakes in technical trading can be two-fold, either due to lack of knowledge or poor execution.
The most common mistakes are buying at the top and selling at the bottom, overtrading, and not taking the time to properly understand how trading works.
Now, let’s dig into all of the common trading mistakes I see.
1. Overtrading
Let’s start by talking about overtrading. This is a mistake that I see many people make. It is also a mistake that could have been easily prevented if you had just done your research before placing the trade.
Overtrading or placing more orders than you should do is the most common mistake.
Many new traders will simply open up their platform, look at the market, and place a trade. They are often chasing after the last couple of candles or they see an opportunity to get in “on the cheap”.
The problem with this approach is that you have no idea if this is a good trade or not. You are simply taking a shot in the dark and hoping for the best.
Overcome by: Only place the A+ setups that you like. Once you have traded so many times per day or week, stop trading.
2. Buying High and Selling Low
We all have heard the saying, “buy high and sell low.” However, too many novice traders do the complete opposite.
This trend happens with one of the emotional mistakes of FOMO; we already dived into that concept earlier.
Overcome by: Follow your trading plan on when to enter and exit the trade. Practice your strategy in a simulated account and master it.
3. Lack of Trading Knowledge
The lack of trading knowledge is a problem for many traders who are not familiar with how the stock market works. This can cause them to make mistakes when buying and selling stocks, which could result in losing a lot of money.
Just because you made a profit once on one stock does not mean that is a repeatable action.
In order to be successful in trading, it is important to have a good understanding of the markets and the strategies involved.
Without proper training, you are likely to make costly mistakes that can cost you money. Trading courses and tutorials are available online and through other resources to help you gain this knowledge and become a successful trader.
Overcome by: Take an investing course. Spend money on your education and not your losses. Here is a review of my favorite day trading course.
4. Following Too Many Strategies
Following too many strategies is a common problem in the investing world, which can lead to poor performance and more costly mistakes.
There are a million and one different approaches on how to trade the stock market, which indicators to use, whose advice you should follow, so on and so forth.
And then, many traders try and couple the strategies together only to quickly learn they may cause more losses than profits.
One way to avoid following too many strategies is by using a set of rules to decide which strategies are appropriate for investing.
Overcome by: Develop your trading plan. Outline the investing strategies you will use. Test any new strategies in SIM first.
5. Do Your Research
The solution to this problem is simple: do your research!
Before you enter a trade, take the time to do some analysis on the asset you are looking at. Look at past price action, news events, and any other relevant information that you can find.
Understand why the market might move in your favor and be able to build a case for it. The more data points you have supporting your position, the better off you will be.
If you are able to build a strong case for why the asset will move in your favor, then you can enter with confidence. This is because if the market does not move in your favor, you will know that it isn’t because of a lack of research on your part.
When you enter with confidence, this will make it easier to hold through the inevitable volatility and price swings.
Overcome by: If you enter without knowing why something is likely to move in your favor, then you are setting yourself up for failure. Do your research.
6. Not Using Stop-Loss Orders
Stop orders come in several varieties and can limit losses due to adverse movement in a stock or the market as a whole.
Tight stop losses generally mean that losses are capped before they become sizeable. However, you may have your stop loss too tight and get stopped out before your stock has room to move.
A corollary to this common trading mistake is when a trader cancels a stop order on a losing trade just before it can be triggered because they believe that the price trend will reverse.
Overcome by: Plan your stop loss in advance. Stick to it as it is part of an overall risk management strategy.
7. Letting Losses Grow
Active traders can be harmed by refusing to take quick action to close a losing trade.
It is important to take small losses quickly and limit your risk in order to stay profitable.
Stop losses can help you avoid larger losses.
While the stock may come back to your buy price, you have increased your risk far beyond what you planned. If your planned loss was $300 and now you are down over $500, it will take that much longer to overcome that growing loss.
Cut your losses. Review the chart. See what a better entry point may be.
Overcome by: If the stock moves past your pre-determined stop, then exit the trade. Don’t trade on hope.
8. Chasing After Performance
Many day traders are tempted to chase stocks, which is a bad reputation in the day trading world.
This happens when they see a stock that has had a large price increase and they think that it will continue to go up. In reality, this is not usually the case, and chasing stocks can lead to big losses.
What goes up must come down, right?
Overcome by: Wait for a better time to enter the trade according to your trading plan.
9. Avoiding Your Homework
It is important to do your homework. If you avoid doing your homework, then don’t expect fast results
Many new traders often do not do their homework before making any investment decisions.
This can lead to costly mistakes that can be avoided by doing some basic research. Trading is a complex process and should not be taken lightly – make sure you are fully prepared before risking your hard-earned money.
Overcome by: If you have not enrolled in an investing course, do that. Set daily goals on how to improve your trading performance that is not based on profit or loss.
10. Trading Difficult and Unclear Patterns
It is important to stick with the patterns and indicators that are clear and unmistakable so you don’t get caught up in any ambiguous or unclear trading signals.
With a little bit of research and understanding, these market patterns can become quite clear.
By forcing a chart to fit in what you want, then you are putting your trading capital at risk.
Overcome by: If you cannot read a clear chart or pattern, then quickly move to the next stock.
11. Poor Reward to Risk ratios
The most common mistake made by traders is poor risk management. This usually means taking on too much risk in relation to the potential rewards, which can lead to heavy losses if the trade goes wrong.
It is important to always have a solid plan for how much you are willing to lose on any given trade and never deviate from it.
What is the Reward to Risk ratio you look for:
1:1 Reward to Risk
2:1 Reward to Risk
3:1 Reward to Risk
Many beginner traders do not want to take on as much risk because their appetite for potential rewards may be lower. It is important for beginners to consider their trading strategies and risk management plans so that they can make the most informed decisions possible.
Risk-to-reward ratios are an important part of trading, and experienced traders are typically more open to risk in order to maximize their potential rewards. This means that they may be more likely to make high-risk, high-reward trades.
Overcome by: Stick to Risk to reward ratios that fit your trading plan.
12. Ignoring volatility
Volatility is the fear and unknown in the market.
The most important thing to remember about investing is that the stock market can be volatile.
A measure of volatility is from the VIX.
Overcome by: Decide how you will trade when the VIX is high and the news is negative.
13. Too Many Open Positions
Entering too many positions is one of the most common mistakes investors make. A portfolio should consist of a handful of top-performing investments that have proven to be good bets over time.
It is unwise to open too many positions in a short amount of time because it could lead to confusion.
This can be risky because if one or two of the positions go south, the entire portfolio can suffer. For this reason, it is important to carefully consider each position before opening it and make sure that all positions are contributing positively to the overall goal.
Overcome by: As an active trader, stick to under 5 open positions. As a long-term investor, look to build a portfolio of 25 stocks over time.
14. Buying With Too Much Margin
Most brokers offer 2:1 or 4:1 margin to cash. While this is tempting to use, it can also give you a margin call.
Margin can help you make more money by increasing your position size, but it can also exaggerate your losses.
Exaggerated gains and losses that accompany small movements in price can spell disaster for a new trader using margin excessively.
Overcome by: Use your cash only. Stay away from using margin.
15. Following Meme Stocks
These are the stocks made popular by many Reddit personal finance groups.
You have probably heard of Gamestop, Blackberry, AMC, or Bed Bath and Beyond as a meme stock.
While these stocks have risen to crazy highs, they have also fallen just as fast. Chasing the high may leave you with a big and painful loss.
Overcome by: Stick to your stock watchlist.
16. Buying Stocks With No Volume
Buying stocks with no volume is a risky idea that involves placing an order on a stock without knowing how much interest there will be in the shares. This can result in losing money if there are no buyers for the shares.
It is important to validate the price of a stock by looking at volume. The volume shows how much interest there is in a stock and can be indicative of future price movement.
When volume is low, it’s best to stay away from buying stocks as it could be a sign that the stock price is not stable.
Overcome by: Trade stocks with a volume of at least 500,000 or higher.
17. Ignoring Indicators
Indicators are things that tell us the market is going up or down. Examples of indicators would be the stock market at a particular point in time, a company’s performance with regards to earnings, the price of a product or service.
Every trader has their own set of indicators they use.
If you have outlined indicators you use in your trading, make sure to follow them regardless if it is against the way you want the stock to move.
Overcome by: Stick to your trading plan for each stock individually.
18. Trading Too Large Position Sizes
Trading too large position sizes is a risk that traders may run into when they hold positions in their portfolios for extended periods of time.
Position size is the amount of money placed on a trade, and the risk is that a trader may lose more than their capital on the trade if it does not go well.
Overcome by: Base your position size on the amount you are willing to lose. Not how much you want to make.
19. Inexperienced Day Trading
In order to be successful in trading, it is important to have a good understanding of the markets and the strategies you are using. Without proper training, it is easy to make costly mistakes.
Too many day traders turn trading into an unnecessary risky game.
To be successful, a day trader must have a solid foundation in how to invest in stocks for beginners.
Overcome by: Practice in a simulated account and make all of your mistakes there before moving to live money.
20. Inconsistent trading size
Inconsistent trading size is when traders are unable to predict what their position size should be in order to meet the trader’s desired profit goal.
Trading size is one of the most crucial aspects of a trading strategy and should be considered carefully. Larger trade sizes come with an increased risk, so it’s important to be aware of your position size when making trades.
Overcome by: Don’t risk too much on one trade. Stick to your risk management plan.
21. Trading on numerous markets
Trading on numerous markets is when a trader invests in stocks, bonds, commodities, crypto, and other securities.
Every type of market moves differently and takes time to understand how to be profitable.
Overcome by: Find your niche and stick to it.
22. Over-leveraging
Leverage is a powerful tool that can be used to magnify gains and losses in a trade. It is important to be aware of the amount of leverage being used in order to effectively manage risk.
Brokers play an important role in protecting their customers by providing margin calls and other risk management tools.
Overcome by: If you feel over-leveraged, sell some positions before your broker gets involved.
23. Overexposing a position
Overexposure is a term used in the investment world to describe the risk that comes with exposing your position too much in the market. When you have overexposed your position, you are putting yourself at risk of losing money if the stock or security you are invested in falls in value.
You are taking on too much risk.
Overcome by: Stick to your risk management plan. Always have cash reverse on hand in case the market reverses.
24. Lack of time horizon
There are different time horizons for various types of trading strategies. It is important to think about the time horizon you are comfortable with before investing in any type of investment.
If you are a day trader, you plan to close your trades before the end of the trading session. As a swing trader, you typically hold trades for a couple of days maybe up to a month. As a long-term investor, you plan to hold your stocks for longer than a year.
Overcome by: Match the time horizon of that investment purchase with your investing goals.
25. Over-reliance on software
Although some trading software can be highly beneficial to traders, it is important not to over-rely on it.
Automated trading systems are becoming so advanced that they could revolutionize the markets. As a result, human traders need to be aware of the potential for these systems to make mistakes and use them in conjunction with their own judgment.
Overcome by: Set alerts before you want to enter or exit a trade. Then, review if the move still follows your trading strategy.
Top Options Trading Mistakes Beginner Traders Make
These options trading mistakes are specific to option trading.
Trading options is an advanced strategy. If you have losses trading stocks, wait before you start trading options.
1. Not having a Trading Plan
Every trader needs a trading plan that outlines strategies, game plans, and trade metrics.
When you are trading without a plan, you are essentially gambling and hoping for the best.
This is not a recipe for success in the world of stock trading and is especially true for options traders.
A good trading plan should include chart analysis so that you can make informed decisions about when to buy and sell stocks. If you are using HOPE instead of a trading plan, then you need to find out the right way to interpret the chart because that will give you a better idea of what is happening in the market and how likely it is that your investment will succeed.
Overcome by: Create a specific trading plan based on your option strategy.
2. Not properly Researching Option Contracts
Learning to trade options is like going to school for a whole different trade.
There are way too many technical aspects to discuss in this mistake.
Spend time learning what criteria you want from an options contract to be successful.
Overcome by: Learn how options work and practice trading options in the simulator before going live.
3. Trading without an understanding of the underlying asset
Before you start trading options, trade with stocks.
Every stock moves at its own beat. You need to learn how it moves.
Jumping into options prior to knowing the stock can cause extreme losses. Learn how the underlying asset moves first. Be successful in trading stocks before moving to options.
Overcome by: Learn to trade the stock with shares first. Then, practice in a simulator. Once familiar, then trade live with options.
4. Buying Out-of-the-Money (OTM) Call Options
Options trading is a risk-based strategy. It’s important to know which strategies are right for you and what the risks of each option type are before putting on an option trade.
One common mistake that many traders make when it comes to option trades is buying out-of-the-money (OTM) call options.
This is because OTM call options are inexpensive and have a range of around 100,000 to 1 million. To avoid this mistake, it’s important to know what the risks of buying OTM call options are and which option strategies are appropriate for you.
Overcome by: Focus on trading In-the-money (ITM) call contracts. Know your strategy.
5. Not Knowing What to Do When Assigned
When you enter into an options contract, you are essentially agreeing to buy or sell the underlying asset at a specific price on or before a certain date.
If the market moves in a way that benefits the buyer of the option (the person who contracts to buy the asset), they can choose to exercise their option and purchase the asset at the agreed-upon price. However, if the market moves in a way that benefits the seller of the option (the person who contracts to sell), then they may “assign” their contract to someone else – meaning that they no longer want to buy/sell the asset, but would like someone else to take on that responsibility.
This can be jarring if you haven’t factored it into your decision-making when trading options, so it is important to be aware of the possibility.
This is why traders need a higher trading level to sell options contracts or verticals.
Overcome by: Be okay with buying the shares if you are assigned. That is a part of your trading plan.
6. Legging Into Spreads
It is a common mistake for traders to get legged into spreads by entering positions when the market price has moved away from their position. They may have gotten caught up in the belief that they are being a “smart” trader by trying to profit from the spread.
The problem is that they are not taking into account that their cost basis must go up in order to maintain the position. If the market price of the underlying goes up, their cost basis must go up as well.
Overcome by: If you are not comfortable with this advanced strategy, then exit your options contract and place a new one.
7. Trading Illiquid Options
Trading illiquid options is a mistake because traders are taking on too much risk, with potentially disastrous consequences.
Illiquid means that the option cannot be bought or sold at the given time.
In other words, the option is not tradable. When traders trade illiquid options, they are taking a risk that their trades will not be executed because there is no liquidity in the market at that time. They have to hope that the market will become liquid again, and they can then sell their position or buy back their option at a lower price.
Overcome by: Check option volume and open interest at your strike place. Verify you have interest in moving your contract.
8. No Exit Plan
It is important to have a plan in case your trading strategy doesn’t pan out as planned.
This will give you the peace of mind that you won’t be left high and dry without an exit strategy.
With options is it more difficult to limit your risk to reward. As a result, you must decide your exit plan in advance.
Overcome by: Develop your trading strategy and include how and when you will exit the option contract.
Ready to Avoid these Trading Mistakes?
Investors are often their own worst enemy when it comes to trading.
They make emotional decisions instead of logical ones, and this leads to them making costly mistakes. Plus there are many technical errors new and seasoned traders are still making.
In order to be successful in the markets, investors must first learn to accept their losses and move on. Only then can they put that mistake behind them and focus on making profitable trades in the future.
In this post, I shared some of the more common trading mistakes that people make and how to avoid them.
Now, you have to work to avoid these trading mistakes and be profitable.
Know someone else that needs this, too? Then, please share!!
In my previous post, a few commenters brought up the issue of market timing, generally taking me to task for appearing to advocate it. Market timing is a topic of much discussion, primarily in the world of stock investing. With this post, I hope to explain the issue and show how it applies to you, even if you never invest in a stock or mutual fund.
What is market timing?
The oldest investing advice in the book is “buy low and sell high.” Market timing is an attempt to do just that: Sell when the market is high; buy when it’s low. Obvious, right?
Obvious, though, is not the same as easy, because market timing, in essence, entails predicting whether the market will keep going the way it’s going, or make a turn, up or down, which is easier said than done.
Let’s say you wake up one morning, and this is the picture you see of a stock you’ve owned for about five years. (The chart is real, drawn from Yahoo Finance, but the name of the stock, and the dates, have purposely been blanked out, because most people’s first instinct will be to draw on historical knowledge to guess the outcome.)
Sell… or hold?
The stock has doubled in value in the five years you’ve held it. Hey, double is high, right? So should you sell today?
Answer: You don’t know. You don’t know if double is high enough or if you should hold the stock in hopes of more gains. Thousands of investors bought Microsoft at $1x, and felt good when they sold for $2x, only to see it go to $10x after they sold. On the other hand, many held AOL at $2x, hoping for $10x, only to see it drop to less than $1x.
The dilemma
Here’s the central dilemma underlying each and every investment decision you will ever make:
Investing is all about the future.
Nobody knows the future.
Every investing post, book or article you read, every hyperventilating-Jim-Cramer show you watch, every debate among investors revolves around that two-fold dilemma. All of us are trying to figure out how to obtain the best future outcome without knowing what that future holds. Some look to history to provide clues to the future, some look at rules or formulas which they presume determine future performance, and some use both. Those all may work some of the time, but there’s no such thing as a perfect predictor of the performance of any investment.
So there you are. You wake up in the morning, you don’t know what’s going to happen in the future, but you have to make a decision on whether or not to sell your lovely stock which has doubled in the past five years.
This might come as a revelation to you, but no matter whether you mean to or not, you are making that decision every day. Not making a decision is making the “hold” decision. Going to the Bahamas for a vacation and not looking at the stock is making a decision: Hold.
The exercise
So… back to the previous chart, what would you do? Before reading further, take the time to come to an answer.
Now, let’s expand the chart and see what happened. The dot on the line shows the point at which we cut it off in the chart above.
Hindsight 1: Should have held
The price of the stock kept rising. With the benefit of hindsight, the best decision would have been to continue holding. It almost doubled again in the three years following.
And then you wake up one morning to see it begin to dip, losing about 10 percent of its value (as you can see at the tail end of the chart).
Should you sell now since it is “high” or hold for even more gain? (As before, come to an answer before proceeding.)
Below is what actually happened. (Again, the dot represents the previous cut-off point.)
Hindsight 2: Should have held (again)
The stock, after that drop which might have spooked you, continued to climb almost 50 percent from the dip, and almost 30 percent from that peak just before the dot… in just 18 months.
Now you wake up on that morning at the end of the chart and see the stock climbing steeply. You have to ask yourself yet again: Sell or hold?
What would you do at this point? It’s been almost 10 years that this stock has risen, and it’s about five times the value at the beginning.
Can you see that timing the market is not easy? It’s like signing your name with your other hand — it sounds simple, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy to pull off. (In case you were telling yourself this is an individual stock, the market is easier to predict, well, this actually was the market. The chart is for the S&P 500 during the ’90s; this would be the chart you’d be following if you held an index fund. The price fell off a cliff right after the last chart ended.)
You can’t escape it. Timing the market is not easy.
It gets worse. You have to do this every single day. You never know if things are going to change that day, so you can’t take any days off. This particular chart covers almost 10 years. With about 250 trading days a year, you’d have had to do this 2,500 times, day after agonizing day, week after week, year after year. That doesn’t count the “worry days” — weekends and the other days the market is closed when you worry that you should have sold at the last opportunity you had. And that’s just for a single stock or index.
Conclusion
You get the picture. Even if you think you can make good predictions or you have a good formula, if you wanted to time the market with this stock (or index) you would have had to come up with 2,500 “hold” decisions in a row, and not a single “sell.” Think you could do that? Think anybody could do that?
Timing the market accurately, no matter what anybody says, is next to impossible. Forget the theory and all those academic studies. Timing the market is a daily exercise, and that is a strenuous affair. The odds are so against you, it’s even worse than gambling. There are a few reasons why it’s so hard:
The future is impossible to predict.
The human brain is not wired to make 2,500 “hold” decisions in a row without fatigue, fear, or some other form of indecision setting in, creating a “sell” decision. The “sell” decision, then, ends up not being a market-timing decision, but a human-brain-inadequacy decision.
Nobody has identified exactly which variables turn the market, up or down. After the fact, it’s easy to reconstruct the cause of a turn, but those reconstructed reasons can’t be turned into a rule or program to predict the next turn.
Some people have attempted to create computer programs that won’t suffer from mental fatigue or fear, but the other two problems above make even that hard to pull off. Warren Buffett says he can’t time the market and so he, with as much humility as he can muster, recommends you don’t try it either.
This doesn’t stop many investors from timing the market, either directly or through the mutual funds they own (outright or through their 401(k) plans). The Investment Company Institute (ICI), a trade group for mutual fund managers, tracks the inflow and outflow of monies to mutual funds. They report that the biggest outflows from equity funds happen after a major market drop. The biggest inflows happen at times when the market is rising. In other words, millions buy high and sell low, and do it consistently every time the market surges.
Why? When the market goes up, the natural tendency for the human brain is to predict that it will continue rising. If the market drops, the same brain tendency is to predict continued dropping. The expectation for the future, then, is a continuation of the past. No turns, in other words.
Your options
There are various strategies people follow to deal with the dilemma of not knowing what the future holds. None of them are perfect, and consequently they all attract their share of critics. Warren Buffett’s strategy is called “buy and hold.” He buys with the view that he will never need to sell. He does time the market for his purchases, though. The classic example is his purchase of most of his Wells Fargo stock when the market whacked the price of that stock down to something like a P/E of around 5, if I recall correctly. So, I guess his strategy is “buy low, sell never.”
If you dig deeper into the market timing issue, it seems most questions focus on the “sell high” part of it. Most stocks, when the market plunges, recover their losses and grow further once the market recovers. Therefore, there’s little to gain if you try and sell high because it’s so difficult to pick the right spot to sell (as you can see in the example above). Buying low is a lot easier, because if the stock is reasonably priced, it can weather a temporary drop in price much better than one with a premium (high P/E) price.
However, you need cash to buy low, and where do you get that cash? Mr. Buffett always has a few billion clinking around in his pockets, but for you and me I that’s not quite so easy. Selling high is the tempting answer, but it’s impractical, as we saw in the exercise above.
With that in mind, you can either be brave and try and time the market, or you can follow Mr. Buffett. You will hear critics spout things like “buy and hold are dead”; but the key question to ask is if their strategy can succeed for as long, and as consistently, as that of Mr. Warren Buffett. His track record speaks for itself.
In January, I accompanied Kim to an appointment with Paul, her investment adviser from Edward Jones. Paul’s brother was my best friend in grade school and junior high, and we have many mutual friends. I sat and listened while Kim and Paul talked about her investments and how she ought to invest for retirement. I didn’t participate much, though, because this is Kim’s money, and I didn’t feel like it was right for me to take an active role.
I did ask some questions about index funds, though. Kim’s money is entirely in individual stocks (like Apple) and expensive load-bearing funds such as VFCAX (Federated Clover Value Fund), which has an expense ratio of 1.19 percent and a sales load of 5.5 percent.
Paul argued against index funds, saying:
Mutual-fund managers earn back the sales load (and high expense ratio) in time so that, long term, actively managed mutual funds outperform index funds. (Note: Studies show that, in general, this is not true.)
Part of the reason people pay him to manage their investment accounts is because he protects them from making foolish emotional decisions about the market and he alerts them to possible opportunities.
Afterward, I asked Kim what she thought of the meeting. She got the gist of things, but found a lot of it confusing. No surprise. I know this stuff and still found some of the presentation confusing.
“What do you think I should do?” she asked.
“Well, I still think you should be in index funds,” I said, but I didn’t push it. Again, we’ve been dating almost two years, but it’s not like we’re married. I didn’t feel comfortable making this decision for her.
Over the next few weeks, I wrote the investment chapter for my ebook. And then I rewrote the chapter. And then I rewrote it again. (This ebook will finally see the light of day at the end of April, by the way.)
As I wrote, I realized that I truly believe index funds are the right way for most people to invest. And it’s not just me. Warren Buffett believes this, as do many other well-known investors. The evidence is overwhelming. The smartest way for the average person to invest is to put all of their money in broad-based, low-cost index funds and never touch it. End of story.
Meet the New Adviser — Same as the Old Adviser
Between January and March, Kim switched jobs. Her new employer also contributes to retirement, but uses a different investment adviser. Last week, we met with the new guy, Evan. This time, I asked Kim how she viewed my role before the meeting. “I want you to speak up,” she said. “I want you to act like you’re my husband.” Well then, OK.
The meeting with Evan started very much like the meeting with Paul. Evan talked about how much Kim needs to save to meet her retirement goals (answer: a lot!). He also talked about where she should put the money. He agreed with me that it’s probably best not to shift around Kim’s existing investments (although I can’t help thinking we’re falling victim to a sunk-cost fallacy by not moving to index funds). He recommended that all of her new money should go into shiny new mutual funds that his company sells — funds that carry loads of 5.75 percent.
Note: These mutual funds are from American Funds, and I’m very familiar with them. When I was married, Kris put a lot of her savings into the American Funds family.)
“How are you compensated?” I asked.
“Great question,” Evan said. “I’m paid out of the sales charge, out of the front-end load of the mutual funds. A part of that goes to me, a part of that goes to my company, and a part of that goes to the mutual fund company itself.”
After a few minutes of discussing these new funds, I decided to speak up.
“Look,” I said. “I write about money. I’m not an investment guru and I don’t have any specific training, but I’ve read and written a lot about investing over the past few years. Everything I’ve read says that the only reliable indicator of future mutual fund performance comes from a fund’s fees. The lower they are, the better the fund is likely to perform in the future.”
“That may be so,” Evan said, “but that’s only part of the story. With proper management, a traditional fund can outperform an index fund. Besides, index funds only work if you’re able to control your emotions. Studies show that most investors earn returns far below those of the market because they make poor choices under the influence of emotion.”
“Sure,” I said. “The Dalbar study shows that every year.” I cite this study over and over again in the articles and books I write. “But investor behavior is only one part of the problem. The other part is costs.”
Evan protested. I didn’t blame him. His livelihood is tied up in this. Besides, I think he truly believes in his funds.
“If Kim were to buy index funds through Vanguard or Fidelity, how would you be compensated?” I asked.
“I’d take 1 percent,” Evan said.
“One percent up front?” I asked. “Or 1 percent per year?”
“One percent per year,” he said. With the roughly 0.25 percent expense ratio for a typical index fund, that would give her a cost of 1.25 percent annually. That beats the expense ratios from the funds Evan was proposing, especially when you factor in the 5.75 percent sales load.
Following My Own Advice
At the end of the meeting, Kim smiled and shook Evan’s hand. “Thanks for your help,” she said. “We’ll go home and figure this out.”
We walked next door to have a glass of wine while gazing out at the stormy Willamette River. “What do you think I should do?” she asked.
“Do you want to know what I would do if this were my money?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“First, I’d contribute as much to retirement as needed to get the match from your boss. I’d have that put into an index fund, and I’d pay Evan his 1 percent per year. I don’t like it, but that’s your best option to get the match from work.”
“For everything else, though, I’d invest on my own. I wouldn’t do it through Evan. I’d open an account at Vanguard or Fidelity and schedule monthly contributions. He says you need to be putting away $920 per month for the next 20 years in order to have the equivalent of $50,000 per year at retirement. Do that. To be honest, I’d rather you didn’t pay me rent or utilities. I don’t need that money. I’d rather see you put it directly into an investment account every month. It’ll still feel like you’re paying me rent, but it’ll be going to your future instead. Does that make sense?”
Kim nodded. “It does,” she said, “but I still don’t like it.” (We’re still hammering out the financial side of our relationship. She wants to pay her half of things — which I appreciate — but I don’t want to take her money. When she pays me for rent or utilities or anything else, I tuck the money into a “secret” savings account at Capital One 360. That makes both of us happy.)
Unconventional Success
After our meeting with Evan, I began to have bouts of self doubt. It’s one thing to make decisions with my own money; it’s another to make them for somebody else.
To boost my confidence, I turned to books. I re-read the rationale behind investing in index funds. In particular, I turned to David Swensen’s Unconventional Success. During our meeting, Evan had pointed to the Yale University endowment as an example of investing success. Swensen is the mastermind behind that endowment. He’s also a passionate supporter of passive investing.
Unconventional Success contains nearly 400 pages laying out the arguments for index funds as “a fundamental approach to personal investment.” It explores asset allocation, market timing, and security selection before ultimately concluding that “overwhelming evidence proves the failure of the for-profit mutual-fund industry.”
Note: You can read a much shorter version of Swensen’s arguments in his 2011 New York Times editorial about the mutual fund merry-go-round.
Refreshing myself about the evidence in favor of index funds allowed me feel much better about our second meeting with Evan. On Monday night, we returned to his office to explain our decision. In short, we wanted to put all of Kim’s future funds into the following asset allocation using Vanguard index funds:
45% into VTSMX, the Vanguard Total Stock Market index fund
25% into VGTSX, the Vanguard Total International Stock index fund
20% into VBMFX, the Vanguard Total Bond Market index fund
10% into VGSIX, the Vanguard REIT index fund (a REIT is like a mutual fund for real estate)
“That’s great,” Evan told us. “We can do that. But there’s just one problem. Our investment platform requires a $25,000 minimum in order to make this happen. Otherwise, it’s not worth our time.”
At first, I thought this was a barrier. Kim doesn’t have $25,000 in new money to invest. But then I hit upon a couple of solutions.
First, we could move our shared “dream fund” from the Capital One 360 savings account where it currently resides. Instead, we could place it in index funds. Sure, this would introduce greater risk, but I’m OK with that. By the time we’re ready to tap this fund, the stock market should be higher than it is today — and it should outperform savings accounts in the meantime.
Second, we could liquidate Kim’s existing mutual funds and move the money to Vanguard funds instead. That’s probably the smartest move anyhow. We had planned to leave her existing accounts at Edwards Jones, but this makes more sense.
In the end, Kim came up with a fun plan. Here’s what we’re going to do:
We’ll move all of her investment accounts from Edward Jones to the new company.
We’ll sell half of her existing funds in order to meet the minimum requirements to begin putting money into a Vanguard retirement account. (And because index funds are the better choice.)
We’ll keep half of her existing funds as they are and allow her new adviser to manage them as he sees fit. Let’s see if he can actually beat a portfolio of index funds.
Meanwhile, she’ll funnel $460 per month into her employer-sponsored retirement account.
Finally, she’ll open a personal Roth IRA account at Vanguard. Into this, she’ll contribute $460 per month. This will give her a chance to see what it’s like to manage an investment account on her own.
This process illustrated some of the problems the typical investor faces. First, she receives self-serving advice from advisers (even when they don’t intend to be self-serving). Second, even when she knows the right thing to do, it can be tough to stick to her guns in the face of trained expertise. Third, there can be barriers to making smart choices, barriers like high minimums and additional fees.
In the end, it’s important to make your own informed investment decisions. Remember: Nobody cares more about your money than you do. If you don’t take the time to educate yourself, you can’t expect anyone else to make the right decisions for you.
Save more, spend smarter, and make your money go further
When it comes to saving for the future, the most commonly asked questions are “what funds should I choose for my 401(k) or IRA?” and “how much should I save per month?”. If you’re like most people, you likely zero your focus in on the former. However, in the grand scheme of things, shifting your focus to how much money you should be saving per month is the smarter, more efficient way to build your funds.
Every month, some money is added to (or subtracted from) your 401(k) or IRA due to factors beyond your control. Your stocks go up or down. A bond fund pays a dividend. In short, market stuff happens and with every month, you add some money to your account. If the amount of money you add is bigger than the effect of the market fluctuations, then your savings rate becomes significantly more important than your investment performance.
What is the savings rate?
Your savings rate is the amount of money you save every month expressed as a percentage or ratio of your overall (gross) income. The higher the savings rate, the more money you save per month. Your savings rate is often regarded as one of the most critical elements of your long-term financial planning. It’s also one of the few factors you can directly influence by making strategic choices. Ultimately, your personal savings rate can be one of the most telling percentages to account for when assessing your retirement savings success.
According to a 2005 Federal Reserve data report, the U.S. personal savings rate hovered between 2.5 and 3%. This rate is alarmingly low and indicates that it could take nearly 40 years of saving to equate one year of living savings in retirement. This past national average also signals back to the previous point— in 2005, more people were focused on building their retirement accounts than actually stashing away disposable income for future planning.
How to calculate your savings rate
Using the savings rate formula is a simple three-step process:
Add up net savings
This should include all non-retirement savings and your retirement savings for the year (including employer retirement contributions). This number could very well end up being negative if you had net debt rather than net savings for the allotted time period. For example, taking a withdrawal from any savings account or taking a loan from a savings account would be a reduction against anything you saved.
Calculate total income
Add your total take home pay plus any pre-tax savings (including employer contributions).
Divide total net savings by total income
Take your total net savings from Step 1 and divide it by your total income in Step 2. Multiply the outcome number by 100 to convert it to a percentage.
Example: You make $50,000 a year and you save $5,000 to your 401K. You had to withdraw $1,000 from your Roth IRA earlier in the year to pay for an unexpected expense but you added $500 back to your Roth IRA by the end of the year. Your employer also contributes $2,500 to your 401K for you.
Your net savings is:
$5000-1000+500+2500 = $7,000
Your total income is:
$50000+5000+2500 = $57,500
Your Savings Rate is:
$7000/57500 = 0.1217
0.1217*100 = 12.17%
What influences the savings rate?
From the state of the economy and fluctuations in market interest to age and wealth, there are a number of different factors that directly influence the savings rate.
Economic factors, such as economic stability and personal earnings, are critical for the calculation of savings rates. Intervals of extreme economic volatility, such as recessions and global crises, typically lead to a rise in investment as consumers minimize their usual spending habits in order to brace for an unpredictable future. However, on the opposite end, periods of exponential economic growth can also build optimism and trust that stimulates a comparatively higher percentage of consumption.
Income and wealth significantly affect the savings rate because there is a positive correlation between the per capita gross domestic product (GDP) and savings. Generally speaking, low-income households tend to spend the majority of their income on everyday essentials and needs as opposed to wealthier people who can afford to stash away regular portions of their income toward saving for the future.
Shifts in market interest can also have an impact on the savings rate. Higher interest rates may lead to lower average spending and higher investment levels. This is a result of the substitution effect— being able to spend more in the future outweighs the revenue effect of retaining existing income earned from interest payments for most households.
Personal savings rate example
To give a more concrete understanding of personal savings rate, let’s use a real-life example to better illuminate the purpose and meaning of this percentage. Say there are two people who work at the same job with exactly the same pay. One saves 5% and earns 10% annual returns while the other saves 10% and earns 5% annual returns. Based on the personal savings rate calculation, it will take over 25 years for the employee with the 10% return to come out ahead.
There are two key lessons here you can take away. First: on your first day of work, immediately save 10% of your gross pay and keep doing so forever. Mathematically, if you are employed and working for 45 years starting at age 20 and you consistently stash away 10% of your income, you’ll end up with enough money to retire comfortably.
The second lesson: if you hit the middle of your career and are still making avoidable investment mistakes like market timing, day trading, and performance chasing, consider changing your strategy. It’s a much more worthwhile venture to learn how to diversify your portfolio and keep costs and risk as low as possible to properly build a financially stable future.
How to increase your savings rate
Bolstering your savings rate is primarily about strategic budgeting, but there are a number of different elements to consider when creating a plan to improve your personal savings rate. Use the tips below to get a head start on building your savings rate.
Tip #1: Cut your spending
It’s vital to examine your current budget and evaluate the areas in which you may be able to cut costs. Identifying these places where you can eliminate ensures that you have ample opportunity to dedicate more of your monthly income toward savings. Every dollar counts, so when going through your budget, be meticulous and intentional about any spending shifts to maximize your saving potential.
Tip #2: Increase your income
The best way to save more money is by making more money. Though that is far simpler said than done, there are a few easy ways you can increase your income without making any significant changes to your existing lifestyle.
Consider the following:
Tip #3: Automate your savings
Instead of depending on yourself to remember to stash away a certain amount of money toward your savings account, introduce yourself to automated saving. One of the simplest ways to do this is by setting up automatic recurring transfers. The moment you get paid, a specified amount of cash will transfer into your savings account, no manual switching needed.
What about investments?
How many people do you know who started saving for retirement at age 20 and haven’t been unemployed, or taken a 401(k) loan, or gone off to India in search of themselves, before they hit age 65? In their 2011 retirement confidence survey, the Employee Benefit Research Institute found that 70 percent of Americans believe they are “a little” or “a lot” behind schedule. The best thing we can do to increase our retirement nest egg is to (snooze alert) save more and spend less. In attempting to do so, many turn to making various investment choices.
Investment choices are undoubtedly important, especially once you’ve accumulated a sizable chunk of savings. It can be fun, scary, and mysterious, and with the chance of earning a huge amount of money if you play your cards right, investing is downright attractive. But it goes without saying that making money is a lot more alluring than saving money. And that’s exactly why it’s so important.
By focusing on bettering your personal savings rate, you’ll enjoy the long-term benefits without any risk or chance involved. By stashing away disposable income for future planning, you can effectively escape the game of chance and gain the assurance you need in growing your own savings on your own terms. Also, money makes money – the more invested, the more you will make.
The silver lining of saving more
Last question: is it better for your 401(k) balance to go up because you’re saving more or because your investments are performing well? Or does it matter?
It matters. Improving your balance by saving more is better. Once you retire, you’ll be using your savings to pay expenses. The lower your expenses before retirement, the easier it will be to cover them from your nest egg. And when your savings rate goes up, your expenses (as a percentage of your pay) have to go down, right? Or, you can just increase your savings rate each time you get a raise to cover the difference.
Maybe the secret of a comfortable retirement isn’t about savings rate or investment performance: it’s about redefining “comfortable.”
Matthew Amster-Burton is a personal finance columnist at Mint.com. Find him on Twitter @Mint_Mamster.
Save more, spend smarter, and make your money go further
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