Tag - #Personal Finance

“Bro, suggest me some good stocks please.”

“Hey, I heard stock X is going to go up, should I buy it?”

“I want to start an SIP, how to do it?”

“So, like can you double my money?”

As a 20 somethings guy working in the financial advisory industry, I have had my fair share of interactions mentioned above. Somehow you become the de-facto person in your circle whom people confer for financial advice. In this series of articles, I’ll be sharing some of the very basics of Investing for any beginner who has very little information about how the system works. Be advised that this is a very generalised heavily simplified version and the actual actions may differ on a case-by-case basis. Let’s take a dive into the world of bulls and bears, shall we?

• The Difference Between Saving and Investing: A common misconception amongst first-time investors is that both are the same. However, there’s a critical difference between the two. Savings, in essence, are any money that you don’t spend from your earnings. For eg. On a salary of Rs. 50,000/- per month, a person is left with around Rs. 20,000/- every month, those are their savings. Investing is when you allocate these savings with the expectation of generating income and wealth. An example, of the Rs. 20,000/- saved the person buys Mutual Funds of Rs 10,000/- and Rs. 10,000 in a bank FD, only then can it be considered investments.
• Set Goals: It might feel like a boring and tedious task, but a lot of investment decisions are based on the person’s financial goals, their risk appetite. The first step before investing is asking questions, why am I doing this? when/how will I be using this money? To appropriately assess investment options.
• Safety Cover: A critical aspect before starting the investment journey is deciding on an adequate safety cover. It is generally advised to have at least 6 months of your expenses stored away in a rainy-day fund; any unexpected setbacks should not deter an investor from their investing goals. Unexpected illnesses/ accidents or death are the biggest threats to an investor’s long-term investing goals as they can cause wealth erosion pretty quickly. Investors should adequately Insure themselves before investing.
• Discipline: Investing has very little to do with markets and everything to do with behavioural impulses. It’s easy to start investing, it’s difficult to keep investing and it’s hardest to stay invested. Many first-time investors lack the discipline to consistently keep investing, but persistence is the only thing that generates wealth in the long term. Another trap most first-time investors fall for is consistently checking their portfolio for gains and losses, which is as unpredictable as the wind blowing and are tempted to cash in on their investments for short-term gains or stop investing altogether because of losses. Discipline wins in the end.
• Uncertainty: Like all things in life, Investing too is unpredictable and difficult to understand at times. Not every investment will give an investor their desired returns, nor does an average investor have the time and skills to analyse their investments periodically to take corrective actions. In order to mitigate the risks, it is recommended that investors confer with SEBI registered Investment Advisors to guide them through their investing journey.

This is the 1^st Part of the Introduction to Investing Series, which will discuss critical aspects of investing aimed at first time investors. Stay tuned for more.

Disclaimer: “The views expressed are for information purposes only. The information provided herein should not be considered as investment advice or research recommendation. The users should rely on their own research and analysis and should consult their own investment advisors to determine the merit, risks, and suitability of the information provided.”

Discipline and Investing!

An investment philosophy contains the core beliefs that guide an investor’s actions and decisions.  How many times have people heard people say “Meditation has changed my life” or “Running has changed my life”.

Is it true that meditation, running, cycling, or going to a gym can change a person’s life? Well, it is the whole process that helps – not just the act itself. Let us say someone starts meditating 3 times a day for 10 minutes each. Once at 7 am, once at 1 pm, and once at 7 pm. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner? In the first week, they do 4 days and miss 3 days. Next week they do 5, then 6 and in 3 months they are meditating for 15 minutes at each session. Now, this ensures that they go to bed at say 11 pm at least – so that they can get up at 6 am and do their meditation at 7. This means no late-night parties – no drinking binges, etc.

So the activity of meditation has brought a lot of discipline to their life. That helps as much as the meditation itself! Ditto for running, cycling – the process helps. After 6 months or 1 year, they go around saying “meditation helps”. True, but partially.

When it comes to investing, again the first step is discipline – to start saving money. That is the toughest part. Once a person learns to save, doing a SIP is not so tough. The discipline of saving says 20% of a person’s salary is a good target to start with. Doing a SIP in an index fund is ideally recommended till one starts learning about investing.

So doing a SIP is about the discipline of taking money away from an investor as soon as it comes. It is one of the best ways of investing for a young person just starting to invest. It works just as well for a seasoned investor who does not want the need to think every day about where and what to invest.

Like meditating, once someone decides to think of saving and tell themselves that Rs. 10,000 per month should be the SIP amount – it can happen. Investors need not fret over missing one or two installments as it takes time to build in the discipline.

Creating wealth is a long-term, multi-year, multi-decade, multi-generational process. Somebody needs to make a start. The ideal age of course is 22, but it is even better if an investor’s father or grandfather had started the process. If they have not, anyone could. We hear such stories very often. Of SIPs started in 1999, 2008, …and continuing. The amount of wealth created is amazing.

On the other hand, we regularly read about celebrities who earned Millions of Dollars going bankrupt. Being driven to suicide. Yes, discipline is boring – especially when investors are young. However, at a later date, the same discipline gives you Financial freedom. Ironic is it not? Discipline leads to freedom!

Source: subramoney by P V Subramanyam

Asset Multiplier Comments:

• Investing has very little to do with finance and a lot to do with human behaviour. Sticking to an investment strategy in a disciplined manner ignoring other temptations is the easiest way to build wealth over time.

• Disciplined investing also gives the added benefit of staying invested over the long term ignoring the short-term fluctuations and volatility in the market. Acting during volatility is one of the most prominent reasons for wealth erosion for investors.

Disclaimer: “The views expressed are for information purposes only. The information provided herein should not be considered as investment advice or research recommendation. The users should rely on their own research and analysis and should consult their own investment advisors to determine the merit, risks, and suitability of the information provided.”

“Money flows into most funds after a good performance and goes out when bad performance follows.” (John Bogle)

We have all seen the wording discretely appended to mutual fund marketing stating that ‘past performance is no guide to future results’. Despite the ubiquity of this message, we struggle to heed its warning. This leads to the damaging behaviour of performance chasing, where we sell our holdings in laggard fund managers and reinvest in recent winners.

The tendency of mutual fund returns to experience mean reversion shows that our propensity to sell strugglers and buy recent winners is not just pointless; it is often the exact opposite of what we should be doing.

This damaging behaviour is driven by outcome bias.  Attempting to mitigate outcome bias and prevent performance chasing behaviour means overriding our instincts and also having a willingness to fail unconventionally.  Neither of these is simple, but that does not mean there is nothing we can do.

How Can We Prevent Performance Chasing?

Outcome bias cannot be switched off.  Whilst awareness is a starting point, it is evident from our continued performance chasing behaviour that it alone is insufficient.  We need to make clear and focused interventions to change our behaviour:

Stop Using Performance Screens: Mutual fund performance screens are ubiquitous across the investment industry. Everyone uses some form of historic performance screen to rank funds. Outcome bias and the performance chasing behaviour that follows are difficult enough to avoid even if you are not actively employing tools that encourage it. So, it is best avoided.

Create decision rules: A simple step to avoid performance chasing behaviour is to create fixed decision rules that strictly prohibit it. On average, it should be an effective means of avoiding the cost of purchasing active managers with a high potential for severe mean reversion.

Go Passive: The best behavioural interventions are the simple ones. Anything that requires behavioural discipline or continued effort raises the prospect of failure. Given this, what is the best way to avoid performance chasing in active mutual funds?  We can restrict ourselves to buying only passive market trackers.

Specify the activity in which you believe skill exists: When investing with an active manager, we are taking the view that the underlying manager has some form of skill. We tend, however, to be very vague about what we mean by this.

Extend your time horizons: Our susceptibility to outcome bias is greatly influenced by the time horizons involved. If we assess investment performance over one day it can be considered to be pure luck, but as we extend the period skill can exert more of an influence.

Performance chasing behaviour is, of course, not isolated to our selection of active fund managers.  It is also not entirely driven by outcome bias. This is not to say that outcomes do not matter.  Of course, all investors are seeking better long-term results for their clients. If we want to invest in active managers, we need to think far more about decision quality and process, and far less about yesterday’s performance.

Source: Why Do We Chase Past Performance and What Can We Do About It? By Joe Wiggins

Asset Multiplier Comments:

• Selecting funds based on past performance is like driving a car by looking in the rear-view mirror. There’s very little correlation between past performance and future returns.
• The best way to overcome outcome bias is to focus on passive index-linked funds, which remove the variability of performance chasing.
• If investing in actively managed funds focus on investment thesis and stock selection process rather than past performance.

Disclaimer: “The views expressed are for information purposes only. The information provided herein should not be considered as investment advice or research recommendation. The users should rely on their own research and analysis and should consult their own investment advisors to determine the merit, risks, and suitability of the information provided.”