When Batting .700 Isn’t Good Enough…
You’re smarter than the average investor, right? You’ve done the research and despite hearing how difficult it is to predict the market’s direction over a specified period of time, you’re confident you know better than the CFAs, Ph.Ds and Quant’s building the algorithms on Wall Street. You even understand that, by definition, if the stock market is selling at a certain price, someone must be buying and someone selling at that price. And there’s lots of buying and selling- hundreds of billions of dollars are transacted in the markets daily, transactions based primarily on the recommendations of the aforementioned brains. After all, we the 99.9999% don’t have the hundreds of billions of dollars and aren’t the ones trading every day (you’re not trading every day, are you?)
But you’re an exceptional investor who got out of the markets near the (then) peaks of the early 1990s, early 2000s and late 2007. No one is perfect though, so let’s assume you called 2 of the 3 mini-peaks correctly or, 67%. In this case rounding doesn’t further support my point, but it does allow me to borrow wisdom from the great Bob Merton, Nobel Laureate, so let’s go ahead and round your 67% track record of success to 70%. As Merton states:
“Suppose I could verify that I’m a .700 hitter in calling market turns. That’s pretty good; you’d hire me right away. But to be a good market timer, you’ve got to do it twice. What if the chances of me getting it right were independent each time? They’re not. But if they were, that’s 0.7 times 0.7. That’s less than 50-50. So, market timing is horribly difficult to do.”
The point is this: yes, the market will selloff at some point. While we may have already reached a mini-peak, or perhaps we have another five or 25% run left in this market, but if you believe in the long-term (existence and) growth potential of the markets, remain calm and disciplined. If your time frame is long enough and are “comfortable” with short-term, i.e., non-permanent capital loss, zoom out and recognize the opportunities that come with market selloffs. If you’re not comfortable with the idea of capital loss, it’s likely time to schedule some time with your friendly neighborhood fee-only financial advisor! Here’s to a successful 4th Quarter!