Blessed by the Potato

Panic!

The US market was down about 4% today, following a ~2% decline on Friday. Everyone on the news and social media and forewords in their books seems to be reminding investors not to panic.

Forget that, let’s PANIC!

Look at your portfolio, and that loss. How many up days did it wipe out?¹ Now is this it? Or could we have another week, another month of days like this? Where’s the bottom???

Now, with that fear feeling very real and sitting quite uncomfortably in the pit of your stomach, how comfortable are you with the way your portfolio is? Are you ready to ride out whatever the uncertain future has in store for us?

If you’re not feeling so good after today’s loss, well the reality is that this is what markets do sometimes. This is normal. If you’re having trouble handling this, then a few things may be at play:

• You could have too much risk in your portfolio. Changing that to something more appropriate for the long term may be a good thing to do when the loss is still minor (just don’t time the market – don’t change it back “when things are more settled” – if you can’t handle risk now, you can’t handle risk).
• You could be untested. This is your first test, there will be more – start getting used to it. Feel the fear and discomfort, then remind yourself that this is what all those books and articles were talking about, and learn to suppress it.
• You may be paying too much attention to minor day-to-day moves – when it makes the front page it’s hard to tune out completely, but you may want to stop checking in on your portfolio if there’s nothing to be done.

There are various things you can do to try to handle the uncertainty, which I know is not easy, especially if this is your first real experience with volatility.

• First, try talking yourself through it. This is normal, it’s happened before, it’ll happen again. Etc.
• Second, try reminding yourself that stocks going down while you still have money to save and put to work is a good thing for you.
• Third, try using it as a lesson to check in less often.
• And finally, go watch Bridge of Spies and ask yourself “would it help?”

So yes, ultimately I’m giving the same “Don’t Panic” message as everyone else, but if you are feeling emotional about the markets then try to use that fear to learn something — either about your risk tolerance, or how to manage fear when markets are erasing years of gains instead of weeks.

1. Not that many, actually – this only took us back to ~mid-Dec.