Tuning Out the Noise in Investing
I was reading a post in the Fat Pitch blog this morning by Urban Carmel and he found a fantastic chart on the perpetual doom and gloom prognostications of market commentators.
Source: Fat Pitch
These quotes come from commentary and outlook written by experienced money managers, all indicating that the market is moments away from a plunge. If you’d followed any of this commentary, you might have jumped out of the market and performed much worse than an investor who paid no attention.
As Urban writes, “Bearish market commentary that highlight risk conjure gravitas. Bullish commentary often seems shallow.”
Everybody wants to be the one that called the next bubble or financial crisis. So much so, it seems, that someone is making that prediction every day. While there inevitably will be a market correction at some point, and some pundit will have pulled the right day out of a hat and be “proven right”, this is of little use to investors. With so much noise out there, the best way for investors to achieve success is with the old maxim, as corny as it may sound, that time in the markets is more important than timing the markets.