When the economy is on its back, looking like it will never recover, and the stock market is hitting new lows--that's the best time to invest. When the economy is breaking growth records and the stock market is hitting new highs--that's the absolute wrong time to pile in.
Or, as Warren Buffett more succinctly put it: "be greedy when others are fearful and fearful when others are greedy." (He should know, you don't become one of the richest people in the world and the most successful investor over the last 60 years if your approach is fundamentally flawed.)
But, most people can never really get their brain around this paradigm. They easily accept that they know nothing of particle physics, brain surgery and rocket science, but they just can't accept the notion that investing and economics are similarly complex.
To most, investing is counter-intuitive.
But, to me, this counter-intuitiveness makes perfect sense. Investing is not like physics, surgery, rockets, home building, plumbing or most other things people do. In most fields, man is competing with nature.
A physicist is trying to understand the rules of nature with mathematical precision such that it can be harnessed. The surgeon wants to understand disease and human physiology such that he can operate to restore health. A rocket scientist uses the rules discovered by physicists to harness nature's power to propel and guide a payload into space. A home builder seeks to erect a structure that will keep out the elements and provide a comfortable and convenient abode for its dwellers. A plumber desires to harness water to serve man's needs within buildings. All of these fields are concerned primarily with overcoming nature.
Investing is different. It's more like sports or warfare in that it is inherently a competition of man against man. And that, I believe, is why it seems counter-intuitive to most.
With investing, you are not just trying to figure out which company will survive and thrive, but how other people perceive that company. The price you pay is not based solely on a company's underlying fundamentals, but on how investors in general understand and interpret those fundamentals (or just plain feel about a company).
When people are excited about an investment, like Apple, they tend to bid the price up above underlying fundamentals. When they hate a company or think it is going the way of the dodo, they bid its price down below fundamentals.
When they think the economy will go ever higher, they want to be fully invested. When they think it will never improve, they want to pull all their money from the market--right now!
But, this herd-like behavior is almost always reflected in prices before such people buy and sell. The price they pay or receive is for the perception of a company or the economy, not just the underlying fundamentals.
In the long term, however, the fundamentals win out. As Benjamin Graham put it, "in the short run, the stock market is a voting machine, in the long run, it's a weighing machine." In other words, stock prices reflect human emotion in the short run and underlying fundamentals in the long run.
Which is why successful investing seems counter-intuitive. When everyone is selling and it seems like things can never get better (2009), you want to be buying. When everyone is buying and it seems like a new era of non-stop growth has dawned (2000), you probably want to be selling.
Because most people will never get their brain around this, counter-intuitive investing will continue to work for those who can harness other people's short-term emotions.
Nothing in this blog should be considered investment, financial, tax, or legal advice. The opinions, estimates and projections contained herein are subject to change without notice. Information throughout this blog has been obtained from sources believed to be accurate and reliable, but such accuracy cannot be guaranteed.
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