Dear friends and readers,
As part of our 'Behaving Your Way to Wealth' series we are including and writing about a recent piece from Dimensional Fund Advisors. This piece highlights how the path to financial success and account growth is built upon "Time in the Market" and not "Timing the Market." While it is a natural, human tendency when we feel fear or euphoria, the urge to resist those basic instincts is what leads to long-term success, especially when it comes to investing!
The lessons of investing history has shown that the best days often occur during the worst times and it is precisely those days of performance needed to stay whole and - stay the course. We have a saying: "You marry your portfolio and you date your stocks." When you are investing in a portfolio of funds and strategies, a prudent portfolio designed to meet specific, important and cherished goals it is built on the history of investing and backed by science, research and mathematics, not emotion, dart-throwing or gut-feelings.
There was a show in the early 80's called "The Facts of Life," one many of you may remember (or perhaps even watched!) The intro song was "You take the good, you take the bad, that's the facts of life!" And so it goes with investing, too. We take the good markets, we take the bad markets, and that's the facts of investing. When your investment plan is aligned with a well-crafted, monitored, risk-focused retirement plan, it is very possible to weather all of the storms life will send your way.
