Investment Advice for Beginners & those who want to grow big in Life
Your friends and family may offer you financial advice with good intentions, but you should be wary of basing your investment decisions purely on stories shared “around the braai”. Lettie Mzwinila explains.
People love to give advice, especially the people closest to us – our family and friends. And while we are often able to be circumspect, sifting out what is irrelevant to us, it can be difficult to resist taking financial advice from family and friends, especially when they appear to have done well for themselves.
Take the bitcoin frenzy, for example. For many experienced investors, bitcoin is a risky investment because one can’t determine its real value using the usual methods for valuing an asset, such as cash flow, historical prices, and supply-demand analysis. The value of a bitcoin is determined purely by how much someone is willing to pay for it, therefore it is difficult to predict its future value.
However, despite the high risk of capital loss, scores of people around the world flocked to buy. Everywhere you went, someone was willing to bend your ear about what a great investment it was. This frenzy drove the “value” of bitcoin to historic highs before it crashed, resulting in significant losses for investors, many of whom had bought at the peak of the bubble.
The bitcoin bubble is a good example of the importance of making well-considered investment decisions. Before acting on investment advice from your social circle, you need to carefully consider what you are trying to achieve on the one hand, and the real value of the potential investment on the other.
There is no one-size-fits-all
Your decision to invest should be based on your circumstances, your appetite for and tolerance of risk, your objectives, and your investment horizon (the length of time you expect to hold the investment). Your social circle may suggest an investment based solely on potential returns, without considering your needs, and this could impact your investment success.
For example, your friend tells you about a unit trust that has been performing well and that they have enjoyed good returns over the past few months. This is exactly what you’re after. However, what your friend neglected to tell you – and what you would have discovered if you did some research before investing – is that the unit trust’s objective is to deliver returns over five years, meaning that you may experience dramatic ups and downs in performance over the short term.
Now, if your goal is to save to pay your child’s school fees in advance at the beginning of the year, then this investment is not ideal for you. The reason for this is that you may need to access your money sooner than five years and risk withdrawing from the investment during a period of volatility, which could result in a permanent loss on your initial capital.
Your friend doesn’t have the full view of your needs, and you don’t have the full details of the characteristics of the investment. That can lead to a mismatch.
A good story doesn’t equal good value
The investment world is filled with stories about seemingly impressive investments, and many people find themselves getting sucked in and making impulsive decisions to invest without doing the necessary research.
However, just because the news about an investment is good doesn’t mean that it’s a good investment – or that it’s the right time to invest. This is because, when the short-term outlook of a company is good, the market tends to extrapolate this into the earnings outlook of the company rather than assessing its long-term earnings potential.
The same goes for bad news: Investors often operate under the assumption that if the news is bad, so is the investment. This is not always true. When market sentiment is negative, you could be looking at an excellent investment opportunity. Bad news pushes prices down – but this is often temporary.
Popular investment advice is often based on short-term performance
Investment advice from our social circles is often based on the short-term performance of a particular investment or headline news. And despite the counsel that it’s “time in the market” that counts and not “timing the market”, we are swayed by recent performance to buy investments that are doing well, and similarly, sell out of investments that are performing poorly – a sure way to destroy value.
Investing is a marathon, not a sprint. To give yourself a better chance of success, take a long-term view rather than continually chasing the short-term winner that everyone at the braai was talking about. If they are talking about it, this “sheen” will be reflected in the price. Paying too much for an asset is a sure way of losing money over the long term.
How to make the right investment decisions?
To be a successful investor takes discipline. You have to learn to ignore the investment noise – information that is not useful to your long-term goals or that distracts you from them. The following steps will help you sift investment tips to determine what is useful and what you should ignore.
Establish the facts
When it’s your money on the line, don’t assume that your friends have done the research. You should also guard against cherry-picking information that confirms your views. Before investing, carefully investigate the investment to determine whether it is appropriate for your needs. For example, if you are investing in a unit trust, study the factsheet to see whether its objectives and timeframes align with yours.
Consider the motivation
Studies have shown that people often encourage their loved ones to take risks that they would shy away from. This isn’t because they have ulterior motives; rather, they simply have not fully considered the implications of that decision.
Consider the worst-case scenario
What if your friends were wrong about the investment? Or what if you were investing at the wrong time – buying when the price is high, thereby setting yourself up for poor returns, or worse, losing money? Considering the worst-case scenario will help you make a more considered investment decision.
Avoid changing direction too often
You are likely to receive a lot of advice from people around you. Reacting to even a portion of this is likely to lead to poorer investment outcomes. It is much better to be clear about your investment plan and stick to it.
Seek good independent advice
Many investors are reluctant to pay for professional advice, but it can be more costly to pursue free tips from someone who is not qualified to give financial advice. A good independent financial adviser can help you select an investment that is right for your circumstances, and help you manage your behaviour while you are invested to improve your investment outcomes. A key consideration in selecting an adviser is trust. In this instance, a suitable starting point in looking for one is to ask for a recommendation from someone whose judgement you value – like family or a good friend. In India always use the best SEBI Registered investment advisor to seek advice and we are proud to be the registered entity.
Hearsay is easier than reality
Why do people take bad financial advice from their friends and family? Because hearsay is easier than reality, said certified financial planner Vid Ponnapalli, founder of Unique Financial Advisors.
“At a social gathering, there is no fact-checking,” he said. “But money is extremely emotional.
“People get carried away [about it] more than anything else,” Ponnapalli added. “The emotional nature of it overrides logic.”
Recently, Ponnapalli presented a retirement plan to a couple in their early 50s. Both spouses intended to work into their late 60s.
One of his recommendations was for them to delay taking Social Security until age 70. At this, the wife said, “I heard we will get nothing from Social Security after the year 2034.”
Then she added, “Besides, I was told the benefits are not taxable. No matter what, I am going to start drawing benefits as soon as I’m eligible, at age 62.”
Apparently, a conversation with a family member had sent her into a panic.
“That response really scared me, and it took me a good 45 minutes to explain why she was wrong,” Ponnapalli said. “Basically, she didn’t understand the complexity of the system and sources of the funding.
“But people listen to this ‘advice’ because it’s about money.”
Scot Stark, a CFP and owner of Stark Strategic Capital Management, said, “I always get nervous when friends and colleagues start giving investment advice or stock tips.”
A client once informed Stark that a co-worker had highly recommended a stock he wanted to ask Stark about.
Stark researched the stock and responded to his client with a simple note: “Biotech. Penny stock. No revenues. Was once worth over 100 bucks. Very risky.”
Stark also told his client to be careful. Nonetheless, the client invested some money in the stock based on his colleague’s advice. Two weeks later “it was down almost 90 percent … and is now worth only 13 cents,” said Stark.
“I have a ton of bad-advice stories,” said Mark LaSpisa, a CFP and president and managing advisor of Vermillion Financial Advisors. He described a situation where, after a client’s father passed away, her brother told her she could roll her inheritance into her own individual retirement account and did not need to take a required minimum distribution until age 70 and a half.
“It took me three calls,” LaSpisa said, “sending her the IRS regulations on rolling over an inherited IRA, and a conference call with her accountant, to convince her that her brother was wrong.”
On another occasion, one of his clients, a widower, reported that his son wanted to be added to his bank accounts as a co-signer “just in case something happened.”
The ramifications went from bad to worse, said LaSpisa, who reminded the client that his son already had power of attorney.
“A bigger issue was that the son was only one of four siblings,” he said. “If the father placed the son’s name on the account as a co-owner, his intent to have the account split four ways upon his passing would not be accomplished, since the son would become the future sole owner of the account.”
However, the biggest issue, LaSpisa said, was that the son was exposing his own accounts to potential liability now or in the future. Should he get sued for any reason, the bank account could be considered an asset.
Bonnie Sewell, a CFP and founder of American Capital Planning, often sees divorcing clients seeking advice from non-professionals.
“Try telling someone who’s already mad at the world that their friends and family are not the folks to rely on in a divorce for financial advice,” she said.
Sewell was working with such a client on property division, looking at two main assets: commercial property vs. retirement funds.
“We had it all mapped out to take the retirement funds,” she said. “It was a one-time opportunity to become an alternate payee to either roll over or take the cash out without penalty.”
But the client came back and said, “My friend told me I should take the commercial property.”
“It was a bad idea, because it doesn’t build toward retirement. She’s depending on a future sale to release funds, and she’d be committing time and money to manage it,” Sewell said.
Her client’s life is now “on hold,” she added. “She’s paying me, paying her attorney, working, taking care of kids — and here comes a friend who blows things up.”
Sewell now needs to gather documents and run a new analysis, adding six months to the process.The bottom line is this, said Sewell: “When you hire someone with special expertise, you need to be ready to listen to them.”
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