alt Hacker NewsGood advice. Ironically most long term folks that just buy low cost index funds and take a nap outperform most of the market stressing out daily on their next move. That’s the cruel reality of investing.
When you factor in the opportunity cost of all that stress and managing an active portfolio the percentage of successful active portfolio managers likely falls down to single digits.
Invest early, invest consistently and often in up or down markets, and the math says you will do very well.
Replies
This has been my investment philosophy as well, but I'm starting to realize that this is forgetting that "past performance does not guarantee future results". It only works when the index goes up, and I don't see any fundamental reason that should be true on the long term. I don't know of a better alternative though.
It's almost the inverse of a cruel reality? Just stick it all in low cost index funds and go to the beach. You'll do as good or better than 99% of actively invested funds. That's not cruel at all, that's actually a pretty comfy reality.
Though I keep wondering if the ‘invest consistently whether the market goes up or down’ defeats the point of a stock market in the first place.
People effectively keep throwing money at mediocre or failing endeavours, which magnifies any structural problem, and everything seems to keep going up whether it’s good news or bad news, until the bottom falls out.
My reading might be wrong, but since 2020 there is no bad news that seems to faze the market by an iota.