If you are back reading this blog after last week’s golf themed post, you must be one of two things. A golfer or just curious and bored! All joking aside, this week I want to use some real-life examples to show the value of having a financial advisor in your life.
Long term investing
Over the past 24-30 months we have seen significant change and instability in every facet of our lives. From being restricted to a 5km radius from our homes, to seeing market instability in our pension and investment funds.
Moving away from the social dilemma that was provided by Covid 19 and all the baggage that came with it, one of the key takeaways (not the cuisine) is that the advice of “time in the market, not timing the market” is the key to long term investing. Here is a graph depicting the US markets in 2020 from Morningstar.
As we all remember, the 12th of March 2020 saw the beginning of the chaos and this is clearly visible in the image above. Markets tanked overnight and left every investor across the world worried, stressed, or at the bare minimum, concerned. There is a phrase out there, “None is so blind as those who don’t want to see”. This comes to mind for those who panicked at this time and took action – reacted to the market and tried to “time the market”. It’s natural to feel the need to jump ship when things are going bad. But look at the market reaction over the next nine months. In 2021, we saw a continuation of an upward trajectory. I am sure plenty of people, who were not working with a financial advisor decided to take action in March 2020. This would have been detrimental to returns and would have seen significant losses over the 12 month period.
Financial planning benefits
To summarise, the value of having a Financial Advisor may not be all that visible on the sunny day, but when things start to become volatile, our value comes to the forefront. Just like when Tiger Woods starts to waiver on the last few holes of the Masters, his caddie’s value comes to the fore. Trust the process, remember its “time in the market, not timing the market” and last of all, consider the value of a financial advisor!
As usual, this was and never will be a standard, jargonised series of blogs, but if you have read this and it sparks your attention and you would like to find out more on the topic, I can offer a couple of options! Firstly, you can contact me directly at daniel@sysgroup.ie or via my LinkedIn profile.
Alternatively, you can continue to follow these series of blogs that will be on the SYS platform on a regular basis and hopefully, we can continue to help our clients and potential client
