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The first ever NotHarry blog post! Written at a time when investors in global stock markets will be a little nervous, now that volatility has returned.
I will start as I intend to go on – with some blunt advice. Don’t expect to make money from stock market investing if you are going to get overly stressed when your portfolio falls in value a little more than you expected. The warning message you get about investments going down as well as up is not a joke.
Of course, it is completely natural to feel bad when the value of your savings goes down, even if you tell yourself you have had a good run and have got loads more dosh then you had a couple of years back. I once heard a very good fund manager who was working for Jupiter state that his working days were a fight with his own psychological processes.
Here is a tip: if you know one part of your perfectly human psychological processes is going to make you feel bad – like a fall in the value of your portfolio – make sure you have trained yourself to have on hand a stronger positive message. For example, that you are pretty clever to have sold investments last year very near the top if the market cycle and tucked away the cash to keep you going for a while. Or that you saw this coming and bought a few investments that are designed to profit from market falls (shorting the market, for example). That means you have lost a lot less than those mugs who just bought “cheap” index tracker.
The good vibes will come much more naturally if you have been rehearsing them!
It is much more pleasant to be a little bit smug than to be down in the dumps about something you could not do anything about anyway!