Doing What Feels Good Isn’t Always Right

I’m trying to stop drinking Coke Zeros. It has been my “go to” afternoon drink. Tastes good to me. The fizziness and sound is soothing for some reason. It feels good to drink a can. Sort of a mini reward or afternoon break.

However, the amount I was drinking was probably not good for me. I can’t see what it is doing to my body after every can I drink. However, I am pretty sure the long-term impact isn’t great for my overall health.

After being in this industry for over 25 years, I’ve seen many clients over the years do things that “felt good” in the immediate future to only have the long-term results not pan out as they’d hoped. In the past, I’ve let clients’ emotions drive some decisions in their portfolios. As a result, we made major allocation adjustments DURING volatile times.

Fast forward to when the “good markets” were happening again, these same clients wanted to look at how they’ve been doing over long periods of time. They then question why they were behind the benchmark or why they don’t have as big of gains as they’d hoped when “the market has been doing so well.”

 We can drill down and see the specific time when we allocated during volatility, did not focus on the data and let our emotions run the investment process. We stayed cautious or kept too much on the sidelines. I know it felt good to do the allocation adjustment in the heat of the moment, but the long-term impact turned out to be bad.

We are going to have volatility. There will be headlines that will cause the stock market to have heartburn for a few days.

I recently told another client that in all my years of doing this, the “inevitable” that the investment world predicts only happens 50% of the time.

Doing what feels good isn’t always right.

Clark S. Bellin, CIMA®, CPWA®, CEPA

President & Financial Advisor, Bellwether Wealth

402-476-8844 cbellin@bellww.com

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