That's our family motto. It started innocently with simple life lessons for quickly growing children, but it's a personal mantra as well. Now when something is hard, I say, "Don't ever…" and the kids reply, "Give up."
This year has not been easy, and it's been made worse for many due to irrational decisions. Investors completely gave up on their carefully chosen investments, threw in the towel, and went to cash.
Nearly one-third of investors over 65 sold ALL of their stocks in the first quarter of the year. This was precisely when they were down by as much as 35%!
It's even worse because the market came back quickly, so few were able to get back in, and many completely missed the recovery.
This is not sound investing, and if you are prone to this behavior, we urge you to reconsider your asset allocation strategy and closely review your financial plan and portfolio stress tests.
We prefer that our retired clients have five to twenty years worth of relatively safe money; cash, bonds, and alternatives, to help ride out these market dips. This way, we don't have to sell stocks when everyone is panicking. Instead, we can use the safer money to fund their living expenses.
We can guarantee that the market will fall again, so make sure you have a strategy that you can live with and won't give up.
Thanks for taking a look, and please don't ever give up.
Your ISC Team