Thursday, September 11, 2014

Cost of Letting Fear Rule Our Investment Decisions



Presented by Mark Phillips

The average individual investor has seen (some say caused) their invested wealth suffered mightily over the past 20 years. The average investor managed to underperform even money market funds over this period. Richard Bernstein, former Merrill Lynch strategist who now heads his own eponymously named shop,  thinks this outcome is largely due to persistently poor timing – or more specifically, investors’ reaction to increased volatility. Simply put, they tend to run away when things start getting chaotic.


With stock-market volatility trending higher in recent weeks, investors are again running away, Bernstein says, citing fund-flow data that shows investors have cut U.S. equity exposure for 13 weeks in a row.

“History suggests that the best investment opportunities are in asset classes that investors shun. We strongly feel investors’ ongoing fear of U.S. equities continues to offer substantial opportunity,” Bernstein says.


 

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