"At Least You Can Serve As a Bad Example"
Submitted by Moneywatch Advisors on February 13th, 2020A good friend says his dad used to tell him when he screwed up that “at least he can serve as a bad example.” In that spirit, someone told me almost four years ago that he had impulsively moved about $250,000 of his retirement account from stock mutual funds to cash because he feared the stock market was about to plummet. Any guesses what happened next? That’s right – the market jumped to new heights. This person then decided to re-enter the market by re-purchasing his stock mutual funds that were now worth much more than when he’d sold. I calculated that his sell-low, buy-high strategy cost him roughly $35,000.