This new year — and really any year — anything you can dream up in the market can and will happen at some time. Those events can last longer than you ever dreamed possible…or not. The duration is always unpredictable.
In this article series, I’ll discuss post-election investing strategies and some of the things that are likely to affect it. In this installment, I’ll explore the presidential election and the financial flight plan.
Just like a pilot filing a plan with air traffic control in order to take you to another part of the world, we do the same thing in the investment space. We create a predetermined flight plan for your financial success, so that you get from your beginning to your destination with your assets serving you along the way — or whenever you want to start spending.
The reason we invest is to grow our money — and the way to do it best is by delaying gratification. We know that because of historical experience. We also know that risk and reward are related.
At VIA IV investments, we consider ourselves permanent owners of our assets. When we buy an asset class, we consider owning it in perpetuity (of course with periodic rebalancing to keep our risk constant).
If the market goes up or down, or if the news media makes some comments good or bad, our exposure to these assets is unchanged because they will always be part of our portfolios.
One very public example of that played out recently, with media personality James Bianco in the middle of March. He was on CNBC when the market looked really bad. He made a statement that everybody should sell everything (again, this was in March 2020).