The bigger question than “Buy or Sell”

I find myself sending you over to my friend Carl’s work a lot these days, mainly because I find that with the market driving everyone crazy here at multi-year highs, people are freaking out and need to be calmed down. Carl is a zen master in real life and his work at the Behavior Gap as well as the New York Times is the epitome of calm and clarity.

I was inundated over the weekend with questions about buy or sell decisions surrounding the Dow 14,000 news. I can’t claim to know the right answer – but for most people, I think they are asking the wrong question anyway, as I’ve said repeatedly. Carl Richards puts his finger on it at the Bucks Blog today:

Here’s the thing we need to remember: we have no idea if now is the time to be buying or selling. But the good news is that it’s not even the question we should be asking. Instead we should be asking, “How can we avoid making the big behavioral mistake of selling low and buying high (again!) in the future?”

Find the time for this today and send it to a friend or loved one who is coming unglued at the moment – we all know or two of them.

Source:

The Question You Should Be Asking About the Stock Market (Bucks Blog)

Read Also:

All-In and All-Out (TRB)

Cash is a bad habit most investors need to kick (Abnormal Returns)