If anything has been learned during this bear market it is that bottom calling is futile. How many bulls have seen their faces ripped off by calling various bottoms? Michael Santoli had an excellent piece in this weekends Barrons on bottoming picking.
For those interested in treating investing as a process based on probabilities rather than points on a chart, the latest missive from Jeremy Grantham, chief investment strategist at GMO, is worth a look. (See: https://www.gmo.com/websitecontent/JG_ReinvestingWhenTerrified.pdf.)
He points out that while the idea of putting cash into equities at much lower levels may seem attractive, as the market plunges to those “attractive” levels, humans are apt to freeze in terror. So, a firm, simple plan to reinvest at certain levels in a few steps on the way down can overcome this.
This is how a disciplined investor behaves when his models, which a year ago were calling for negative multiyear returns, are now saying fair value on the S&P 500 is 900 — and yet he assigns a 50% chance of it falling below 600.
Great stuff.
Mr. Roche is the Founder and Chief Investment Officer of Discipline Funds.Discipline Funds is a low fee financial advisory firm with a focus on helping people be more disciplined with their finances.
He is also the author of Pragmatic Capitalism: What Every Investor Needs to Understand About Money and Finance, Understanding the Modern Monetary System and Understanding Modern Portfolio Construction.