I was checking on GInvest and I'm not surprised that the ATRAM stock investments have gone down. I checked my current portfolio and things went down. I was tempted to panic-sell until I recalled Grandpa Warren Edward Buffet's advice. It's sad that business schools, based on my experience, never taught students how to invest in stocks properly, not even the business schools. It's a good thing that Buffett himself speaks in such a way that I can understand it. I may not be the Oracle of Cebu City (nor do I intend to). I decided to Google Warren Buffett again for advice. I might need to buy a book by Buffett though before I can continue this project.
The article (from Yahoo! Finance) I found was written last October 23, 2010. Here's some advice that I should heed instead of social media gossip:
But numbers are only part of the equation; Buffett also emphasizes the human element in investing. As he stated in his interview, "Some people should not own stocks at all because they just get too upset with price fluctuations. If you're gonna do dumb things because your stock goes down, you shouldn't own the stock at all."
This advice shows that emotional resilience is as crucial as financial acumen when it comes to successful investing. Buffett advises that potential investors should educate themselves and treat their investments as long-term business partnerships to better weather the market's ups and downs.
Buffett challenges the age-old belief that a balanced portfolio should include a fixed percentage of stocks and bonds. He contends that if someone is emotionally unable to deal with stock market fluctuations, perhaps they shouldn't be in stocks at all, no matter what conventional wisdom or financial advisers might suggest.
I was laughing when I read through all the comments last year when the Philippine stock market turned red. It's a good thing I decided to listen to Buffett than the social media gossipers (read here). It's very easy to dismiss my blog because Blogspot. That's pretty much an Ad Hominem. I don't think I'll impress the social media gossipers if I move to WordPress (which I think has issues such as poor security for a website domain) and get a domain. They'll still dismiss me because they'd probably rather believe the likes of IBON Foundation instead. I write articles to impress the fools. I write articles to improve myself as a person and to share knowledge.
In 2022, there was also a bear market. I ended up getting into a CNBC article (last 2022) which has the advice of Buffett (and the late Grandpa Jack Bogle) would give this advice:
While many investors saving for retirement may be wondering what to do in such a tumultuous market, Warren Buffett has said the answer is simple: Try not to worry too much about it.
“I would tell [investors], don’t watch the market closely,” Buffett told CNBC in 2016 during a period of wild market fluctuations.
The Oracle of Omaha added that investors who buy “good companies” over time will see results 10, 20 and 30 years down the road. “If they’re trying to buy and sell stocks, they’re not going to have very good results,” he said. “The money is made in investing by owning good companies for long periods of time. That’s what people should do with stocks.”
Many experts, including Buffett, also recommend buying index funds, which are automatically diversified and hold every stock in an index. The S&P 500, for example, includes big-name American companies like Apple and Amazon.
Like Buffett, the late legendary investor Jack Bogle also recommended a buy-and-hold strategy. He previously told CNBC that buying stocks and holding them was the best way to invest because “your emotions will defeat you totally” if you try to sell your holdings to avoid losses and get back in afterwards.
“Stay the course,” Bogle said in 2018. “Don’t let these changes in the market, even the big ones [like the financial crisis] … change your mind and never, never, never be in or out of the market. Always be in at a certain level.”
For most investors, trying to react to market trends is likely to backfire, financial experts tell CNBC Make It. It’s better to wait out the market’s ups and downs.
The very advice of Buffett and Bogle, both grandfathers, would be not to get too attached to the fluctuations. Right now, I even am saying, "Sink! Sink!" while crybabies are posting stupidity on Facebook, Twitter, etc. I recently added some money into the ATRAM Global Equity Opportunity Fund (read here) and there's a dent. For me, the dent is good news because if the NAPVU goes lower--I'd be able to get more shares in global stocks. Thematic investing is the style of what I've recently entered. Just think of the "irrationally low prices" that will be periodically attached to good businesses like these:
If I continue to add in more money (though I also still plan to add more money into the other funds I have recently), I would get "irrationally low prices" from companies like Apple, Google, and Microsoft to name a few. It would also mean that I'll get theme allocations depending on where the stocks would be good to invest. I didn't invest a certain sum today hoping it'd become a PHP 1 million tomorrow. It would be good to get into these solid companies. That kind of attitude is why people end up gambling instead of investing. Some might be trying to get rich quickly using cryptocurrency, only to find out that the promises are too good to be true.
I'm currently expecting a big crash could happen based on Facebook comments. There was a crash in the Philippine Stock Market because of panic selling (read here). I was just laughing thinking about it, "Oh well, more for me!" I could laugh evilly thinking about the irrational move. I ended up buying some extra units in an index fund. Maybe, I'll get more units in the ATRAM Global Equity Opportunity Feeder Fund. It's going to be another opportunity.
As Buffett says, "If there's blood on the streets, buy stocks."