Focus on the short term can be dangerous for long term wealth
With sub-prime and credit crisis headlines now filling the non financial press, many investors may be tempted to look at the stock market on a daily basis. Overall, feedback from financial planners is that their clients have not panicked over recent events.
Perennial are concerned however that many investors may react to negative market sentiment on an overly emotional basis.
According to Perennial Investment Partners, if you panicked on Friday 17th of this month and withdrew from the market you would have missed the bigger weekly surge in over 32 years the next week with Australian shares up 7.4% for the week ending 24 August.
To put some commonsense into the current volatility, Perennial Investment Partners looked back to 1988 at the Australian Sharemarket (All Ordinaries Accumulation Index) to come up with some sobering facts.
Firstly, most people would be surprised to learn that in over 4,957 trading days between now and 1988, in only 55% of those days did the market see returns positive or at par.
Let us look at the facts over the last 19 years:
The value of staying the course:
Compound annual growth rate:
(Cash -UBS Bank Bill Index)
- 19 Years (26/08/1988-27/08/2007)-7.44 %
- Last 10 years-5.47%
- Last 5 years-5.65%
Australian Shares (All Ordinaries Accumulation Index)
- 19 Years (26/08/1988-27/08/2007)-11.69%
- Last 10 years-13.35%
- Last 5 years-19.50%
Removing best 10 days:
Australian Shares (All Ordinaries Accumulation Index)
- 19 Years (26/08/1988-27/08/2007)- 9.71%
- Last 10 years-9.81%
- Last 5 years-13.92%
The bottom line is, if you focus on the short term you could easily lose the nerve to be invested in growth assets which could deplete your long term wealth as it is indeed true that over the longer term, diversified growth assets will outperform diversified defensive assets.
30-Aug-2007