We think the world of investing can be quite daunting and with the plethora of options available to choose from – how does one even start to build a suitable portfolio?
Financial services are dominated by many products from multiple organisations marketed by even more individuals who are all vying for your hard earned funds. Making a choice of who to place your funds with is confusing for those in the industry, let alone for the layperson.
In an industry obsessed with opinions, statistics, figures and very few facts we have simplified a few things.
What do we know for sure?
- Costs do play a role – but there is a difference between cost and value.
As the saying goes – “Price is what you pay – value is what you get”. We ensure that the product hidden behind all the marketing will meet expectations.
- Being in the market consistently is better than being out of the market consistently.
The market by its very nature is unpredictable and will be influenced by many factors, not least of them being human sentiment. Some of these have a short duration and other will have a longer duration.
- No-one can predict the future, but everyone is happy to express an opinion.
There is a wealth of information available to investors, however for the market to exist, by its very nature it must be unpredictable.
- Short term market movements should not result in revised long term strategies.
There are always reasons to second guess a strategy in the short term, however one needs to filter out short term noise and concentrate on long term objectives.
- It is possible to beat the market in the short term, but tougher in the long term.
Strategies pay off differently over time and as such in the short term, some strategies will outperform others, however in the long term the market is simply the sum of all strategies. As such we believe the market should form a basis for most long term strategies.