Topic: How To Invest

What is Pat’s commentary for the week of August 27, 2019

Article Excerpt

Recently I had lunch with a friend who is also a portfolio manager. He asked a couple of today’s most common questions. What do you think of the market? Are you worried about how long the market rise has lasted? As I’ve written here, I think the ongoing long-term rise—the one that started in spring, 2009—still has life left in it. I’m not worried in the least about how long it has been rising. I concluded a long time ago that when the market goes into a serious downturn, it does so for substantial reasons, not because it has beat a previous record. Anything can happen in the next six months, of course. But that’s true in any six-month period. There’s a large random element in short-term market trends, and a short-term downturn is always possible. You have to accept that risk if you want to succeed as an investor. In my view, however, the market is likely to be higher by,…