Topic: How To Invest

What is Pat’s commentary for the week of June 23, 2020

Article Excerpt

In the past decade or two, we’ve often said that low interest rates can buoy the economy, but they can also spur investors to make choices they later regret. The most vulnerable investors are those who never really got comfortable with the volatility and uncertainty of stocks, or who had bad experiences in the stock market and never figured out what went wrong. As they near retirement, these investors prefer to invest mainly in bonds. They are willing to take a chance on bond-alternatives, so long as they seem to offer safe, high yields of 6% to 10%, like those that were last available from bonds in the 1990s. It’s easy to find promises of high yields today. Safety is harder to nail down. All too often, instead of using a healthy sense of skepticism to choose among investments now available, these investors let wishful thinking creep into their decisions. Unfortunately, as business coach Dan Sullivan warns, “Your eyes only see what…