|
 |
I always like to look on the optimistic side of life, but I am realistic enough to know that life is a complex matter. - Walt Disney
|
|
|
Cash is king?
When it comes to successful investing, there is no substitute for being in the markets for the long term.
A little over a year ago, when the stock market cracked, many investors started heading for the exits. The dilemma all investors face is the struggle between "recency bias" and providing for their long term financial objectives, including inflation. In the wake of last year's crisis, too many investors chose to cash out, rather than weather out, the financial storm.
Cash is an element in a properly diversified investment portfolio; it smoothes out the inevitable rough periods and allows investors not to panic out of the markets at just the wrong time, as so many did last March.
But keeping too much cash (or near cash type instruments such as money market funds, short term CD's, etc.) is essentially financial suicide on the installment plan. Due to inflation, you lose purchasing power each and every day.
Investing in the stock and bond markets does involve volatility (markets go up and down, not up and up). But to win as an investor, you must actually be invested in the markets. And that means accepting volatility in exchange for long term returns.
It means staying invested -- not just in good times, but at all times throughout your life.
- James E. Wilson, CFP®
|
|
|
From The Wall Street Journal \ 9.11.2009
If buy-and-hold is dead, then what is alive?
Jason Zweig writes columns and articles that place the financial news in a broader context, based on the latest research in psychology, economics, and neuroscience.
|
WealthRx® is J.E. Wilson's unique wealth management process, designed with successful physicians in mind. Learn more. Contact 
