You have a significant retirement portfolio. You’re an experienced investor. You’ve done pretty well at picking stocks. You probably even own a few of Zacks Top Retirement stock picks like:
OceanFirst Financial (OCFC), Bristol Myers Squibb (BMY) and Amgen (AMGN).
If you did something similar, would it be advisable for you to trade your own retirement nest egg?
Maybe…if you’re an exceptional investor who can expertly manage risk and keep up perfectly resolute emotional control in the face of market volatility. Be that as it may, for most investors, there might be better ways to accomplish long-term retirement investing objectives.
Active stock trading requires an altogether different investing philosophy and risk – reward understanding than building wealth for retirement.
Diversification vs. Stock Picking
Picking individual stocks has the potential for huge returns – but also carries a lot of risk, which is particularly hazardous when investing for retirement.
A study done by Hendrik Bessembinder of equity markets over nine decades found that just 4% of the best-performing U.S.stocks generated all the market’s gains. The rest were flat – the gains of the next 38% were wiped out by the bottom 58%, which lost money.
For even the most talented stock pickers, the odds for long-term success are slim.
Is Successful Investing a Mind Game?
Most people think they can make rational investment decisions, but research indicates the opposite is often true. Investors followed in a DALBAR study performed significantly worse than the S&P 500: For the 30 years between 1986 to 2015, the average investor earned just 3.66%, whereas the S&P 500 produced a 10.35% return.
Importantly, this period included the 1987 crash and big bear markets in 2000 and 2008, but also the bull market of the 1990s.
This study indicates that one key explanation behind investor underperformance is attempting to time volatile markets – and that irrational emotional biases are likely to compound investor botches.
Curiously, even experienced traders tend to underperform since they can’t resist the emotional urge to make impulsive investment choices. They might be overly self-assured and miscalculate risk, get attached to a price target, or perceive a pattern that does not exist. This behavioral fallacy, over the long-term, can be disastrous with potential underperformance of a huge number of dollars disrupting your retirement.
What It All Means for Retirement Investors
When it comes to managing your assets for retirement, you must look at performance over the course of years and decades – not weeks or months. Because most traders generally tend to focus on the short term, they may not have the right mindset to achieve successful long-term outcomes.
Does that mean you should quit trading? Not really. One plan is to take 10% of your investable resources and trade to create alpha and look for outsized returns.
But the point we’re making here is that the money you have set aside for your retirement should be invested using a more conservative, long-term approach designed to produce reliable returns, so you can steadily build assets and achieve your retirement goals.
Do You Know the Top 9 Retirement Investing Mistakes?
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If you have $500,000 or more to invest and want to learn more, click the link to download our free report, 9 Retirement Mistakes that will Ruin Your Retirement.
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