Wealth Management Perspectives

Michael Antonelli, Baird's PWM Market Strategist, talks about selling stocks based on fear.

More often than not, continually tweaking your portfolio results in worse performance than if you just left it alone. We believe the key to investing is staying focused on the long term. Not only has the stock market historically trended positive, but far more often than not, it has handily outperformed both bonds and cash. By keeping a long-term mindset, we can focus on our larger financial goals and not on the bouts of short-term volatility or occasional steep dip.

With many companies having reduced their annual grants of stock options or restricting the amount of company stock that can be acquired in their 401(k) plan, employee stock purchase plans (ESPPs) are becoming an increasingly important way to offer employees an opportunity to acquire company stock.

It’s easy to look back and scold yourself for not investing in Amazon, Tesla (a 5,600% return; see below) or any number of IPOs that have proven wildly successful. This is known as hindsight bias, the inclination to view past events as having been more predictable than they really were. It’s especially prevalent among investors who, when looking back at their portfolio misses, shake their head and mutter “I should have seen that coming.”

Diversification is the basic strategy of trying to limit exposure to risk by investing in an uncorrelated mix of assets. That might be a mouthful, but it just means owning investments that respond differently to different market pressures. It is the “don’t put all of your eggs in one basket” of the investing world.