Time is your Friend, Impulse is your Enemy
Here Bogle states that developing and maintaining an Investment Strategy over time will be much more beneficial for your portfolio development. And those impulsive decisions will cause harm to your wealth. Personally I feel that there is some truth to this sentiment, as often times impulsiveness regarding investment choices comes from an emotional decision to sell a position when it starts to drop in value. The Fear Emotion kicks in and people don’t want to hold onto a losing proposition so sell.
The fear emotional impulse is further exacerbated by the delay that occurs leading up to the tipping point when the sale happens. Think of it like a boiling pot, you never know when it is going to boil but as soon as it does you react. In a trading situation most folk will have a certain degree of tolerance regarding daily losses, so if a position should drop by 2-3% most people could continue holding the position. However should the downward trend continue the pressure to react emotionally increases, until boiling point.
These emotional decisions can kill a portfolio, as what will happen is a sale occurs at a depressed price point. There will be a moment of reflection from the buyer, and they will consider re-entering the position as it starts to tick up – not too soon though as it may be a blip in the market, they wait to see it trending solidly upwards. In other words they sell when it is too low for them to hold it anymore, then they buy again when it is high enough to look good… sorry folks, but that is not the way to make money.
A Passive Investor is taught to ignore this fear as they are told to buy regardless, as such everytime the price dips they get to buy more equity for each dollar invested, and they dollar cost average the position to a more reasonable basis level. When it rises again (to when the emotional guy thinks to reenter) they have made a sizeable gain on the investments that occurred when the prices were depressed.
Whilst it may seem the cold hearted Passive Investor won in this scenario, it doesn’t mean that Active Investing failed, it means that uncontrollable emotional decision making has no place within your Investment Strategy. If you can trade with the same level of control as the Passive Investor, you can still reap their benefits of the cost averaging.
Don’t put all your eggs in one Basket.
If you are an Active Investor it would help you to not hold too much of a position within a specific Equity or Sector. If the result of a 20% drop in the value of Telco Companies would mean a 20% drop in your entire retirement account you will likely feel too much pressure to emotionally react to the market. Better would be to first decide upon an allocation that gives a proper balance between reward and risk, and does not push you outside of your tolerance zone in order to chase profit.
It is a sad fact that many people will state their risk tolerance is a lot higher than it is, and when a market is positive and growing people will have a lot of tolerance, but when it is in a recession their tolerance level changes. A sound investment plan will have just one tolerance point for both good times and bad, and if you are really honest with setting it you will find a point where the emotional reaction to sell when your price is low will be avoided.
Guideline for Position Saturation
The actual numbers will differ for everyone, so for my own Investment Strategy I follow these rules, but yours may be different:
- Individual Stock – Total Allocation No more than 10% of Portfolio Total
- Individual Sector – Total Allocation No More than 25% of Portfolio Total
- Indexed Class – No more than 60% of Portfolio Total ( Index Class would include Total Stocks, Total Bonds, International Stocks etc).
Though I do have a very bullish and aggressive attitude, and would imagine that many people would be more comfortable at around 50% of these levels.
Emotions are Best Controlled with a reasonable Investment Strategy and ensuring you stick with it.
If you are able to trade more Actively whilst remaining in control of your emotions you suddenly unlock a world of Value Investing. This will happen mostly on the purchasing side of new positions. It is a common trend in recent years for the slightest news to create a disproportionate change in the value of the equity.
For example when a stock misses earnings expectations by a cent on the dollar drops of 15%-25% of the value can occur. If the stock has sound fundamentals one could imagine that this would be a good opportunity to enter or increase a position on the stock. If it is a stock that you are familiar with due to it being in your portfolio already or on your watch list acting with impulse can reap huge benefits – if you see the world crumbling around the share price, forced lower by peoples emotional fear trades you can impulsively step in an purchase, creating an excellent price point.
Also, for positions you currently hold this is a good chance to Dollar Cost Average by buying more and reducing your basis. Over time as the equity recovers you will benefit from the additional profit from the lower entry price you paid for the stock.
This concludes Bogle’s second Principle ‘Time is your Friend, Impulse is your Enemy’ and yet again we see that it is a sound principle, but not something that is exclusively for the use of Passive Investors. Active Investors are certainly at risk of reacting with emotion, but no more so than a person who tries Passive Investing then panics when the price is dropping and decides to exit the positions – both are equally bad when driving by emotion, yet Active Investing does allow for more opportunistic Impulse Purchases when the feeling is the price is undervalued compared to its Mean Price.
If you haven’t already, check out:
Lessons from John Bogle’s First Principle of Investing: Reversion towards the Mean
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