Archives for August 2011

Less is More. Even Less is Even More.

August 17, 2011

That there’s too much information is obvious. So don’t perpetuate the problem.

If you’re reading this, then presumably you’re financially curious if not financially savvy. As the old saying was supposed to go, curiosity killed the overzealous investor. Here, just this once, resist the temptation to check the market daily. It does you no good to let your moods move in sync with what other people are willing to pay for stocks. If the public is an ass, what does that make the person who lets them dictate his behavior? Instead of exposing yourself to numbers that you’re powerless to do anything about anyway, live your life. Walk your dog. Learn HTML. Take shooting lessons. Floss your teeth, which you probably don’t do enough anyway.

The Wall Street Journal, Yahoo! Finance and every general news outlet’s business section each devote a prominent place to the same particular piece of information, listing the index values and changes from yesterday (or from the previous hour, or sometimes the previous minute.) Every change, no matter how minor, becomes newsworthy by definition: otherwise, CNBC and Fox Business would be reporting on something else.

Even no news is news: “Stocks remained largely unchanged today.”

If you’ve ever obsessed about your weight, and most people have, you’ve stepped on the scale daily. (We’re talking to the normal-sized people in the audience, not the fat ones.) It’s not uncommon to weigh yourself twice or even more times a day; say, immediately before and after a workout. (Note to the fat people who are still reading after specifically being told not to a couple of lines ago: a “workout” is this procedure by which you combine aerobic and anaerobic exercise in order to build muscle and burn lipids. “Exercise” is this…oh, never mind.)

Ever been in a relationship where either you or the other person constantly looked for reinforcement? If it happens often enough, suffocation sets in and the relationship crumbles. If he loved you 6 hours ago, and last week, and last month, and a year ago, chances are pretty good he still loves you now.

The week of August 8-12 was an anomaly among weeks on the New York Stock Exchange, with 400-point swings every day. Given the level of the Dow, that means changes of less than 4% every day. Each of which might be meaningful if every jump hadn’t been followed by a fall of similar magnitude, and vice versa.

400-point swings on an index that sits around 11,000 aren’t as important as you think, especially given how fleeting they are. For a comparison, thank God the ordinary digital bathroom scale only gives readouts to the nearest half-pound. There are people reading this right now who would freak out and discover a new thing to obsess over if there existed a commercial scale that could weigh you at 150.3489 pounds first thing in the morning, 151.9849 after breakfast, 150.6227 before lunch and 150.1452 when you went to bed.

Here’s 12 days’ worth of recent market movement:

And 12 months’ worth, each plot point representing the Dow on the 1st day of the given month (or the 31st day of the previous month if the 1st was a Saturday, etc.)

Note the difference in the heights, but also note the difference in the scale.

Most importantly, note the difference in the progression. The same investors and railbirds who were alternately cheering and cursing the market throughout the time span of the first chart could probably look at the second chart with sober happiness, if they a) wanted prices to rise and b) had the capacity to process information at this more deliberate speed.

Seriously, look at the pretty multihued second chart again. Tell the typical investor in September of 2010 that the market is going to do that over the next year, and she’d have been overjoyed. Unless, of course, she was selling everything short. Granted she’d have preferred to have gotten out of the market back in May, but we humans haven’t been equipped with functional hindsight. All in all, the market has shown a consistent path toward growth over the past year. No, it might not in the future. As usual, that’s not the point.

When you check the market as often as it swings, that makes as much sense as a climatologist duly noting that her geographic region of interest warms up every morning yet gets colder every evening.  It’s not that the data means nothing, it’s that it means nothing unless placed in the appropriate context. If you’re a mayfly, or Zsa Zsa Gabor, then go ahead and check stock prices as often as you can. In fact, even that doesn’t make sense because if you’ve only got a short time ahead of you you should be enjoying life, not looking at columns of data.

Most of you are going to check the market tomorrow regardless of what we suggest. If you’re really hungry for information, browse our archives. Or better yet, buy our book and learn what else you should be doing.

**This article is featured in the Yakezie Carnival, The Hurricane Season Edition**

Filed Under: Bad Examples, Investments, Making Smart Choices, Newsflash Tagged With: , , , , ,

Carnival of Wealth – What Are We Getting Into? Edition

August 14, 2011

Small bites.

It’s officially our baby now. The Carnival of Wealth returns to its permanent home for another week of fun and finance. Again, these were either the most insightful or most entertaining personal finance blog posts of the last week. If you’re a writer, you can get in on this too. Just submit your entry here by midnight Saturday, and if it makes the cut you’ll find out by coming back here late Sunday. Maybe Monday morning if we’re having a particularly eventful night. Again, these are actual posts from actual bloggers:

Alright, not yet. Before we get started, one request.

Submitters, would it kill you to spell and punctuate properly? We’re not even asking for your content to be gripping, we just want the form to be something that approximates English. Makes it easier on us, and greatly increases your chances of getting selected. Thank you. On with the show:

An audio submission? That’s a curveball. Sirius gave Rosie O’Donnell a microphone, so why not give Matt Wegner’s podcast at Financial Excellence a listen? This week Matt talks about Standard & Poor’s downgrade of the U.S.’s credit rating, among other things.

Money Cone points out that the market recently took its biggest hit in a while on Monday (sure enough, he submitted that before the market’s big rebound on Tuesday, and the secondary dip on Wednesday, and the subsequent rebound on Thursday.) Short-term fluctuations aside, M.C. wisely says not to sell a stock until its fundamentals worsen. Warren Buffett’s advice is easy enough to articulate, but are you disciplined enough to follow it?

This might not directly be about how to make money, but we’ll make an exception for Jason at Live Real, Now as he explains how to register a domain and find a host without impoverishing yourself.

Marie has a guest post at Prairie Eco-Thrifter this week about how negotiation is slowly becoming commonplace in our prix fixe society. Fortunately, she correctly cites failure to negotiate as the primary reason women get paid less than men. Unfortunately, she repeatedly quotes the wisdom of that bald mustachioed dingbat Dr. Phil.

Dividend Stocks Online lists their 2 favorite dividends stocks this week, in a fairly technical post about growth vs. income.

If you’re thinking of killing your wife and reaping the rewards, even if you’ve got the perfect alibi and hire the same hitman Robert Blake used with such great success, think again. Brian at Testate Will explains how you first want to determine if you live in a community property state, then confirm that your wife isn’t carrying any debt, and only then kill her. And not one moment earlier.

This week’s “Infomercial Masquerading As A Blog Post” comes from Jesse Michelsen via Investor Junkie, who explains why you should use Zecco to day-trade your way to riches.

If you’re getting a tax refund, or worse yet, paying a preparer to get you a tax refund, at least don’t delay paying for the privilege. Eric J. Nisall at DollarVersity explains why you should remunerate your preparer ASAP. Those of us who send the IRS checks rather than letting them enjoy our money interest-free all year long would agree with that, but we’re too busy lighting cigars with $100 bills.

Money Spending Mommy shows a flair for locating profound arithmetical truths this week. We’ll let her describe it:

“Even though most people don’t retire in their forties, most of them are beginning to seriously think about whether they’re saving enough for retirement. Money advice in your forties may be similar to what you received in your thirties; however, you probably have fewer years to be planning and saving.“

Wait a second.

40s = years between 40 and 49
30s = years between 30 and 39.
40 > 39.

Hey, she’s right! You do (“probably”) have fewer years to be planning and saving in your 40s than in your 30s! Who says ladies are bad at math?

Yes, you can erect a flamboyance of plastic pink flamingos to stand outside and make your home more attractive to potential buyers. Or you can subscribe to The Family Wallet’s 20 slightly more sensible recommendations.

It’s been a while since the CYC principals worked in the regular world, which is why this post from Nelson at Financial Uproar inspired all sorts of cringing. It’s a scathing indictment of the performance review, that absurd song-and-dance in which a supervisor grades you while some pedantic whore from the human resources department offers her opinions on a topic she knows nothing about. If there’s any endeavor that should be graded pass/fail rather than in degrees, it’s employee performance. Either you’re good enough to stick around, or you should be fired. Instead, we’ve developed a formal system where at fixed intervals, your supervisor has financial incentive to tell you that you suck no matter how good you are.

D4L at Dividend-Growth-Stocks screened his database for stocks that’ll yield 10% in 10 years at current yield and dividend growth rates. Read his findings here.

It barely counts as an observation to point out that if you’re undisciplined with regard to the body God gave you, you’re going to be undisciplined in most other aspects of your life. Case in point is Reformed Chocoholic, which apparently is not a parody site but really does feature the musings of a morbidly obese woman with a ridiculous 41.2 body mass index who thinks that the world is dying to hear the details of her daily food consumption (“Breakfast: 1 scrambled egg, 2 pcs. Canadian bacon, 1 cup soy milk, 1/2 apple & 1/2 orange.” Ahem, bullcrap.) We’ll give her points for candor, though: she also admits to having $57,000 in consumer debt. YES, THIS IS THE KIND OF PERSON WHO SHOULD BE DISPENSING PERSONAL FINANCE ADVICE. Next week, Jani Lane will post about the evils of taking drugs.

Somebody good? Thank you. Neal Frankle at Wealth Pilgrim is routinely one of our favorites. His ability to cut through the nonsense and see things from a different perspective always gets our attention, and this week’s 7 Unconventional Tips to Become a Successful Entrepreneur is no exception.

We can’t very well ignore the guy who founded the Carnival, can we? Much like when R.E.M.’s retired drummer Bill Berry wants to jam with them on the occasional gig, we’ve left the kit permanently open for Arohan to lay down a few beats whenever he feels like it. This week his Value Stock Guide features a guest post from Shailesh Kumar on how to determine a stock’s book value.

Thanks again for coming. Let’s do this again a week from today.

Filed Under: Carnivals
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