Know Thyself

An article entitled “What is Your Biggest Investing Challenge?” appeared in a recent issue of Charles Schwab OnInvesting. I would like to comment and expand on some of the author’s worthwhile observations. Knowing yourself, your limitations, your weaknesses, your biases, is an essential component to self mastery as well as finding the road to financial freedom.

Not playing the game is the most frequent and the most serious mistake made by most Americans. There are really only two ways to build up significant net worth. The oldest is real estate. Unfortunately, playing that game requires a lot of money. For most of us that means borrowed money. As 2006 demonstrated nothing, including real estate, goes up forever. Leverage is a dangerous friend. When the market goes south it is pretty easy to lose more than your total investment. Losing 100% of all your money is bad. Losing more than 100% is totally unacceptable. When you are far enough along to pay cash for income generating rental properties, you probably don’t need to invest in real estate except for the purpose of diversification. That means the stock market for all but a few who really understand real estate and have the resources to play in that arena. The best place to start is your 401(k), 403(b), traditional or Roth IRA depending on your particular situation. Small automatic deposits taken directly from your pretax income won’t be missed, but when these funds are stashed away in a tax sheltered vehicle over the course of a working lifetime, the results can be astonishing. This kind of investing doesn’t even require more than the initial decision to start the journey. Life cycle funds sometimes called target date funds will maintain an age appropriate balance of foreign and domestic holdings in both stocks and bonds at a very low cost.

The flip side to staying out of the game due to under confidence is overconfidence. This investment sin can take many forms. The most obvious is gambling too much money in a single high risk/high reward investment—such as lottery tickets. Just joking, but I think you get the idea. Perhaps the most frequent manifestation of this mistake is holding more than 10% of your liquid net worth in shares of your company, the one who gives you a regular paycheck. Many employees have nearly all their holdings in shares of their company. If that stock tanks, not only will you lose a substantial portion of your nest egg, but you might even lose your job at the same time. However, overconfidence is something that can affect anyone, such as me, who has enjoyed some success in the market. It is easy for me to think, “I know what I am doing,” when I am riding a bull market or maybe just got a little lucky on a couple of investments. I have to remind myself from time to time that I will never outgrow the need for wise counsel and research even when investing in the most conservative funds. If I don’t remind myself, believe me, at some point the market will remind me of my limitations.

The article calls out “Status Quo” as a common investment mistake. Sometimes doing nothing is the best investment decision. Sometimes it isn’t. I am a buy and hold kind of guy. This is a very good strategy for most investors. When combined with DRIP (Dividend Reinvestment Plan) that plows dividends back into new shares of stock, doing nothing can put the power of compound interest to work in some remarkable ways. A stock that pays a good dividend, like AT&T can double its value in less than ten years even if the price per share doesn’t move very much. However, sometimes things change. The recent increase in the Fed rates caused a quick drop in the bond market. A complete reliance of bond funds would have hurt a portfolio that was out of balance. I should have been warned when I heard the words, “ability to borrow money at lower rates,” but Kinder Morgan Partners had been a star in my crown for quite a long time. When the parent corporation bought out the limited partnership, I let 90% of my position in the partnership roll into Kinder Morgan. Shortly after this decision, the news came out that Kinder Morgan was carrying too much debt. I lost half my money in a very short time. I comfort myself that I lost “the house’s money” rather than any of my initial investment, but that is just my feeble attempt at dealing with cognitive dissonance.

Regret aversion is the next mistake mentioned in the article. Simply put, “The burned child fears the fire.” Don’t worry. If you invest in the market you will lose money—some of the time—in something. However, Siegel’s constant tells us that over the last two hundred years, American equities have delivered a remarkably steady 7% return over any reasonably long period of time. Just hang on and scream. If you maintain that well diversified, age appropriate balance through good times and bad, you will be buying stocks when they are cheap and selling them when they grow expensive, unlike most of your neighbors who will be selling when the market tanks and chasing stars when they are at their most over valued. By the way, chasing hot returns is the last investment mistake mentioned in the article.

Now take a good look at the person in the mirror. What are you doing with your money? Do you have a plan? Are you following your plan or changing it on a daily basis? Do you know your own comfort level? I have tried “trading” using technical analysis on two occasions, one was pretty successful, but I realized I am simply not wired to be a trader. I have also discovered I should stay away from individual tech stocks. As an engineer, I tend to fall in love with technology rather than with the business underlying the technology. This is a big mistake. I limit my technology holdings to mutual funds or a managed account. Finally, I love fossil fuels. Chevron has been a consistent money machine since the beginning but I can talk myself in carrying too much in energy shares. I have been bitten a couple of times by this predilection, but I hope I am growing wiser in old age.

Now! For Heaven’s Sake! Let’s be careful out there!