Our Opinion on Recent Market Volatility
Most everyone knows I served 28 years as a Marine. My heart pours out for the innocent people of Ukraine. Witnessing this footage of an outright invasion of a country is something I can only describe as jaw-dropping.
So I have to admit I feel guilty even touching on the topic of volatility in the markets as it seems so trivial, but I must share my opinions since opinion is what we are all about at Monument.
As I stated in my previous very short blog, pullbacks happen. All the time. It’s the cost of investing.
Dealing with this pullback requires investors to properly frame the current market action. On a recent podcast episode, Jessica and I interview Dr. Daniel Crosby, a best-selling author, and a Behavioral Finance MASTER. He explains why your brain is the biggest enemy you face as an investor.
But because I know that there is a lot of worry right now and not everyone reading this is going to immediately go listen, here is a transcribed section that is VERY IMPORTANT to read RIGHT NOW. And maybe print it out and put it on your refrigerator to re-read every day.
Dr. Daniel Crosby:
We learn to trust our intuition because sometimes it works, and our intuition works in a very specific subset of times. For intuition to work, it needs to be a decision that you A) make repeatedly and B) get immediate feedback on.
So if I eat, whatever, a bad piece of meat, it’s immediately gross. I immediately get sick. I’m like, “Okay, I’m never going to do that again.”
The market doesn’t work that way.
First of all, how many truly catastrophic markets do you get in a lifetime – two or three, probably? So someone trying to time a big decline in the market…that doesn’t come around every day. You don’t have this experience every day, and then the feedback’s not immediate.
Jessica talked about Facebook stock today. If we were to buy Facebook stock today, when would we know if that was a good decision or not? I don’t know, 10 years from now, 15 years from now, 10 minutes from now?
David B. Armstrong:
Or a year from now?
Dr. Daniel Crosby:
Yeah, is it a bad decision because it goes down another 10% in the next week? Maybe, maybe not.
The timeframes are so subjective in the markets, the conditions aren’t met for your gut to work.
You need repeated exposure to a decision with immediate clear feedback. Neither of those conditions are met, and so your gut is just not a good guide to markets, and the evidence backs that up.
So look, I get it…it feels shitty right now and it’s easy to look at the TV and say, “This is only going to get worse!”
And it could, but the point that Daniel makes above and that I want to reinforce is that YOUR INTUITION is not well enough honed to be a good decision making tool as it relates to the market.
If you are not following Monument Wealth on Instagram, please take a second to follow the page @monumentwealth, I’m starting to do more “Reels” which are 60-second videos…so you are only subjected to me and my thoughts for like a hot minute. I did a Reel yesterday on the past 33 corrections (market declines of at least -10% or more).
Here’s where to find it and what it looks like–
But since a picture is worth 1000 words, (or will save you from reading another 2000 of my words), here’s a great graphic from Ryan Detrick at LPL Financial depicting the aftermath of the 37 very historical and geopolitical events.
One last thing for some perspective is that the market is essentially up 50% over the past 24 months. I usually refer to the S&P 500 in my writing but since the index level of the Dow is a common point in the news, let’s use that for perspective.
With the Dow at about 32,400 today (2/24/2022 at 12:30) that’s the same level as it was around March 21st of 2021. So while no one likes to lose profits, I remember most investors feeling pretty happy back then. This is just a mental checkpoint for you to consider in the big picture and remember that volatility is the price of admission to the Investing Theme Park.
I don’t know what will happen in the market. Things may get worse but I truly believe that trying to utilize your intuition to navigate the volatility is not a prudent thing to do and will likely make losses worse.
I understand there is fear right now, but one thing I have learned about the market and in life is that fear of a thing is always much worse than the actual thing.
Keep looking forward,
David B. Armstrong, CFA
President & Co-Founder
Dave got into the industry when he discovered his passion for finance in his mid-20’s. He’s a combat veteran and served as an officer in the United States Marines Corps on both active duty and in the reserves, retiring at the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. While serving on active duty, Dave was unable to spend money on deployments, so he became a self-taught investor. Along with a few bucks cash as a bouncer, his investing performance grew to be good....
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By David B. Armstrong, CFA
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