10 Ways to Destroy Your Portfolio ? Investing Caffeine

November 5, 2011

With the rise and frequency of heightened volatility in recent years, investing has never been as difficult as it is today. However, the importance of investing has never been more crucial either, thanks to the rising, corrosive effects of inflation, and the uncertainty surrounding the sustainability of Social Security, pensions, and other retirement accounts.

If you are not losing enough money from our structurally flawed and loosely regulated financial industry that is inundated with conflicts of interest, here are 10 additional ways to destroy your investment portfolio:

#1. Watch and React to Sensationalist News Stories: Typically, strategists and pundits do a wonderful job of parroting the consensus du jour. With the advent of the internet, and 24/7 news cycles, it is difficult to not get caught up in the daily vicissitudes. However, the accuracy of the so-called media experts is no better than weather forecasters? accuracy in predicting the weather three Saturdays from now at 10:23 a.m. Investors would be better served by listening to and learning from successful, seasoned veterans (see Investing Caffeine Profiles).

#2. Invest for the Short-Term and Attempt Market Timing: Investing is a marathon, and not a sprint, yet countless investors have the arrogance to believe they can time the market. A few get lucky and time the proper entry point, but the same investors often fail to time the appropriate exit point. The process works similarly in reverse, which hammers home the idea that you can be 200% wrong when you are constantly switching your portfolio positions.

#3. Blindly Invest Without Knowing Fees: Like a dripping faucet, fees, transaction costs, taxes, and other charges may not be noticeable in the short-run, but combined, these portfolio expenses can be devastating in the long-run. Whether you or your broker/advisor knowingly or unknowingly is churning your account, the practice should be immediately halted. Passive investment products and strategies like ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds), index funds, and low turnover (long time horizon / tax-efficient) investing strategies are the way to go for investors.

#4. Use Technical Analysis as a Primary Strategy: Warren Buffett openly recognizes the problem with technical analysis as evidenced by his statement, ?I realized technical analysis didn?t work when I turned the charts upside down and didn?t get a different answer.? Legendary fund manager Peter Lynch adds, ?Charts are great for predicting the past.? Most indicators are about as helpful as astrology, but in rare instances some facets can serve as a useful device (like a Lob Wedge in golf).

#5. Panic-Sell out of Fear & Panic-Buy out of Greed: Emotions can devastate portfolio returns?when investors? trading activity follows the herd in good times and bad. As the old saying goes, ?The herd is lead to the slaughterhouse.? Gary Helms rightly identifies the role that overconfidence plays when ininvesting when he states,?If you have a great thought and write it down, it will look stupid 10 hours later.? The best investment returns are earned by traveling down the less followed path. Or as Rob Arnott describes, ?In investing, what is comfortable is rarely profitable.? Get a broad range of opinions and continually test your investment thesis to make sure peer pressure is not driving key investment decisions.

#6. Ignore Valuation and Yield: Valuation is like good pitching in baseball?very important. Successful investors think about valuation similarly to skilled sports handicappers. Steven Crist summed it up beautifully when he said, ?There are no ?good? or ?bad? horses, just correctly or incorrectly priced ones.? The same principle applies to investments. Dividends and yields should not be overlooked ? these elements are an essential part of an investor?s long-run total return.

#7. Buy and Forget: ?Buy-and-hold? is good for stocks that go up in price, and bad for stocks that go flat or decline in value. Wow, how deeply profound. As I have written in the past, there are always reasons of why you should not invest for the long-term and instead sell your position, such as: 1) new competition; 2) cost pressures; 3) slowing growth; 4) management change; 5) excessive valuation; 6) change in industry regulation; 7) slowing economy; 8 ) loss of market share; 9) product obsolescence; 10) etc, etc, etc. You get the idea.

#8. Over-Concentrate Your Portfolio: If you own a top-heavy portfolio with large weightings, sleeping at night can be challenging, and also force average investors to make bad decisions at the wrong times (i.e., buy high and sell low). While over-concentration can be risky, over-diversification can eat away at performance as well ? owning a 100 different mutual funds is costly and inefficient.

#9. Stuff Money Under Your Mattress: With interest rates at the lowest levels in more than half a century, stuffing money under the mattress in the form of CDs (Certificates of Deposit), money market accounts, and low-yielding Treasuries that are earning next to nothing is counter-productive for many investors. Compounding this problem is inflation, a silent killer that will quietly disintegrate your hard earned investment portfolio. In other words, a penny saved inefficiently will depreciate rapidly.

#10. Forget Your Mistakes: Investing is a very challenging game, and it is not getting any easier. As Albert Einstein said, ?Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.? Mistakes will be made and it behooves?investors to document them and learn from them. Brushing your mistakes under the carpet may make you temporarily feel better emotionally, but does nothing to help your returns.

As the year?approaches a close, do yourself a favor and evaluate whether you are committing any of these damaging habits. Investing is tough enough already, without adding further ways of destroying your portfolio.

Wade W. Slome, CFA, CFP?

Plan. Invest. Prosper.

www.Sidoxia.com

DISCLOSURE: Sidoxia Capital Management (SCM) and some of its clients own certain exchange traded funds, but at the time of publishing SCM had no direct position in any other security referenced in this article. No information accessed through the Investing Caffeine (IC) website constitutes investment, financial, legal, tax or other advice nor is to be relied on in making an investment or other decision. Please read disclosure language on IC ?Contact? page.

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Entry filed under: Education. Tags: buy and hold, Einstein, ETFs, fees, index funds, market timing, media investing, Peter Lynch, Rob Arnott, transaction costs, valuation, Warren Buffett.

Source: http://investingcaffeine.com/2011/11/05/10-ways-to-destroy-your-portfolio/

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