This month’s client’s corner focuses on financial journalism and the negative news bias. Scary news sells and humans have a powerfully instinctive drive to over anticipate and overreact. When it comes to investing for retirement, reigning in that desire to react can often be a major challenge.
Staying informed is important but placing too much weight on financial forecasts can often leave investors misinformed and lead to poor decisions. As long-term money managers, we train our clients to see past the noise of the financial media and focus on their long-term goals without sweating the bumps along the road.
One of the greatest advantages you can have as an investor is a long-term perspective. Effective financial planning absolutely needs to take into account your short and medium-term goals, but the magic really happens when you give stocks the time they deserve to generate the returns needed to compensate for the short-term risks involved.
Financial markets are resilient. They have crashed, recovered, and reached new highs time and time again. Bear markets are a normal part of investing and the key is to remember that history has proved that over time, the uptrends outweigh the downtrends. Historically, the best response a long-term, goal-focused, plan-driven investor can make to a crisis is no response at all—or, more accurately, to just tune out the doom and gloom of financial news and continue acting on your plan.
We hope you enjoyed this month’s Client’s Corner. Please do not hesitate to reach out if you have any questions or feedback.
Thinking about hiring a professional to help you implement a long-term financial strategy? We would be more than happy to set up a 30-minute discovery call to get a better understanding of your unique situation.
