Dear Investor
Do you feel that was a long enough break from the rat race?!
It seems to me as though the Christmas break gets shorter and shorter every year. This is no doubt because I spend less time than before, relaxing while absorbing the beauty of the countryside and less time relaxing in the company of friends…. All because my subconscious, with the help of the ever-present smartphone, drag me back to the ingrained regimen of reading e-mails for crises, checking the markets & currencies for anomalies and so on.
Our state of consciousness is key. If we are able to immerse ourselves in what we are doing and we are doing what we love doing, e.g. surfing, fishing, reading, then we will come away recharged. Living in the moment is essential for our mental health as it replaces all the clutter of our subconscious mind and replaces it, after a few good days of rest, with new ideas and renewed energy to tackle the new year. We need rest and we need a cycle which ends so that we can believe in a new beginning and give ourselves a chance to reach our goals, all over again without worrying about yesterday.
What will the new year bring? That doesn’t actually matter to the investor unless he/she is about to make a decision to buy, change or sell. These are the critical moments and utmost care should be taken to assess current circumstances before any active decision is made. The rest of the time one should simply ensure you are invested in a well-balanced portfolio of excellently managed funds or of quality stocks and don’t fret about the daily news along the way. A good analogy is the journey that a spacecraft undertakes to a space station and back to earth. The critical moments are the blast-off & acceleration into the atmosphere, the move from one space station capsule to another and the re-entry into the atmosphere and the landing. A back-up rocket is essential in case the first one misfires. The bulk of the journey is spent floating in space while time elapses and other work of a non-life-threatening nature can be done such as research, record keeping, etc.
I hope you enter your desired market at a low point and that you exit at a higher point. I also hope that you have a back-up plan such as a diversified portfolio so that when you are in need of some cash, sufficient of your funds/stocks is in the black.
Sensible decision-making, good habits and discipline to you all
Best wishes
