99% of investors have no clear idea of their performance and the costs of investing money, even when they think they do.
1% are prepared to have their thinking challenged.
What do we mean by having your investment decisions challenged?
Every investor has a problem they need the answer to. How do I know if I am doing the right thing? Why is that a common problem? The answer is in the term ‘feedback loops’
Knowing if you have had a good meal, the feedback loop is minutes. Driving too fast in your car, the feedback loop is seconds. Reflecting on a holiday maybe weeks. Changing your diet, months. Successful investing for retirement, the feedback loop could be 40 years or more. That means mistakes are almost impossible to rectify. If you have a bad meal, you’ll tell others and perhaps not return to that restaurant. If the diet or exercise plan does not work, you can change it. How do you know how to change the decisions you’ve made for your retirement or beyond? It is therefore hard to create a feedback loop that is meaningful when you invest for the future? If you’ve not focused on this issue, you are one of the 99%
If you recognise this problem, you are likely to be in the 1% of investors.
Challenging your thinking does not mean having a second opinion. In the world of investing, there are many investment companies, wealth managers, financial advisers, and fund managers. The choice is almost endless. If you ask 100 different investment firms for an opinion, you’ll get 100 different answers. So how do you know which is the best? For many people, you hope you’ve made a good decision. The purpose of a second opinion is for an investment firm or advisor to persuade you to change what you are doing and move your money to the firm offering a second opinion. It’s like jumping out of the frying pan into the fire. If there is no clear way of knowing if the decisions you’ve made to date are good, bad or indifferent, then a second opinion will confuse matters and not help you.
Having your thinking about investment decisions challenged does not seek to say one firm or adviser or manager is better or worse than another, rather it’s questioning how you make your decisions to choose. If your decision-making process is amateur or flawed in any way, what are the chances of making a really good decision between the alternatives available to you? At best, you need luck on your side.
Most investors prefer the status quo. It’s easier to do nothing. Yet 1% of investors will address this problem. Are you in that 1%?
We help 1% of investors who are prepared to have their thinking challenged.