Topic: How To Invest

What is Pat’s commentary for the week of October 23, 2018

Article Excerpt

A vast number of factors can affect the price of any stock you buy. That’s why investors have a natural impulse to look for some sort of investing shortcut or formula that can cut the effort that goes into investing decisions. (Ideally, we all prefer a formula that fits on a T-shirt.) I spent a lot of time researching investment formulas in my 20s and 30s. I learned they can be a great marketing tool for advisors and financial institutions. But, for investors, they expand costs and/or risk more consistently than profit. Later on, I figured out that this all-too-human impulse runs counter to at least two of our TSI Laws of Financial Physics: Stock-market fluctuations are subject to a large random element. News reports will often claim that the stock market went up or down because of some particular fact or news item. These reports may seem to carry an official air. More often, they are after-the-fact rationalizations or guesses. In fact,…