The Biggest Mistake

The biggest mistake most individual investors make is buying high and selling low. I know that this sounds dumb, but I'm surprised how common it is. I have a few coworkers who have proudly announced that they have recently reshuffled their retirement portfolios into GICs (guaranteed investment certificates). Indeed, one of the most vocal proponents of this strategy told me this about 2 months ago, when the market was within spitting distance of its (local?) bottom.

Now, if you believe the market is going to go lower before it goes higher, then cashing out what you've got and sitting until things improve is a decent strategy. But these are people have sworn off the markets permanently. They say they are not going to get back into volatile investments. So they've taken the full loss that the market handed them, and are going to make it back at interest rates that are currently about 2% annually, and might optimistically rise to 6% when the economy improves.

Worse...I don't believe they're out permanently. If they're driven by their emotions in this down market, it seems likely to me that when they look at all the money other investors are making in the next bull market, they will be tempted to get back in...probably again near the peak of the market. And so this kind of emotionally driven investing will continue to compound their losses with each cycle.

I think this is the reason for the popularity of the Buy-and-Hold strategy. It allows people to hold over the long term and so, while they won't see the big gains of people who sell during bull markets and buy during bears, they will at least see the overall long-term up trend in markets. It works if you don't chicken out, just as the contrarian approach works if you have the willpower to buck popular sentiment.

I don't know that I have any advice, other than if you don't like the market's ups and downs, you should get out during the next bull market, not now. For me, I'll continue with my current strategy of keeping my speculative holdings until I'm convinced they're not going anywhere, and keeping my retirement savings in fairly volatile, equity heavy mutual funds...they've actually only lost 25% in the bear market, and stand to gain much more when the bull returns.

---

Photo by Timothy Valentine, used under the terms of Creative Common By-NC-SA 2.0.

Fighting the Emotional Response

I think one of the easiest traps to get into in this game is to watch your money fluctuate daily. On the one hand, you need to keep track of how things are performing, but on the other, it's an emotional roller coaster as things bounce up and down and all around.

In short, this week I wiped out my previous gains, and then some. I had made $600 on Wavefront (TSX-V:WEE) last week, when I sold for $3.18 a stock that I'd bought for $2.10. Since this appears to be a company with great growth potential for the future, I bought back in at $2.90. Now it's $2.70. I also jumped on to Bank of Montreal (TSX:BMO), a stock I've been considering for a while. Unfortunately, while waiting for my account with Questrade to open, I missed out on some of its best bargains, and the price has backed off a good 5% from where I bought it. And lastly, my holdings in First Majestic (TSX:FR) continue to languish, and despite a small rally, I'm still down a couple hundred dollars on them.

So the problem I'm having is this - I'm confident in all of these companies. I believe they're great long term holdings. But in the short term, I'm watching my market value wither, and I can't help that gut response "sell...it'll be cheaper later." I think there are times to sell losers - when there's reason to believe that the market is near the top of a cycle, or if new information is comes out that doesn't look good. But this isn't one of those situations. The market is at least mid-way down, and I personally think it's closer to the bottom than that, so selling even stock that largely moves with the index - BMO - seems to pose an equal risk to holding.

And WEE and FR could be poised for a breakout year. WEE's technology is now market ready, and they made a major sale to a Texas oil company last week, so I see no reason to believe more won't be on their heels. FR's production is way up, and it would not be unreasonable to expect them to start posting profits this year. There's a Warren Buffett quote to the effect that stocks are the only thing that people start buying as they get more expensive. I'd rather be in now than wait for the next announcement.

So, I fight the emotional response. It doesn't make sense to sell solid companies just because they're declining in the short term. But it's sure a tough urge to fight.