VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Robin Powell
Joachim Klement/ Liberum Capital
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RP: Investors would achieve better outcomes if they simply focused on
avoiding mistakes.
Joachim Klement has written a book on the mistakes investors commonly
make.
A helpful analogy, he says, is the game of tennis.
JK: If you go to top class tennis – you watch Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal
play with each other – the better man wins, in the sense the better man who
has more winners in the tennis match. However, if amateurs like us and if the
broad audience like us plays tennis, it’s not necessarily who has the best
winners and the best serve and the best returns who wins the match, but the
one who makes less mistakes.
And the same thing is true for investing; if you go to the absolute elite level of
hedge fund managers and top fund managers, there it is about finding the
best stocks, picking the winners, but for most of us we can actually improve
our performance much more if we just avoid the worst mistakes that cost us a
lot of money.
RP: So what’s the biggest mistake of all?
For Joachim Klement, it’s having a short-term focus.
JK: We all have tendency to look at the markets all the time, to look at our
investments and then follow the news more and more closely, and that tempts
us to react to short term developments, if the stock is for example down by a
couple of percentage points, because of some news item, whether it’s an
economic effect or something the company has done, we tend to get
panicked, sell it, and then buy something else. Or, we’re maybe lucky with
some investments, want to cash in with a ten percent gain, and then buy
something else.
Well, the problem with both of these things is that on the one hand it
increases trading costs, because you have to pay commission – even in our
twenty-first century world these commissions are very low, they still add up.
But also, we tend to actually sell the wrong stocks at the wrong time, mainly,
take profits too soon and don’t let our winners run, and at the same time,
don’t buy into the right stocks afterwards.
RP: What can you do, then, to shift your focus away from the here and now?
This simple tip is surprisingly effective.
JK: It sounds strange but my, I would say the best recommendation I can give
is don’t look at your portfolio too often. Which is exactly what most people
don’t do. Most people, if they’re worried about their investments start to look
more often. The problem is, the more often you look the more you see these
short term swings and the short term noise that actually doesn’t matter in the
long run.
RP: Another way to avoid mistakes is to use a financial adviser — not to pick
and choose investments for you, but primarily to manage your behaviour.
JK: A financial adviser is there to manage your emotions, to manage your
behaviour. To help you when you get greedy, not to get too greedy. To help
you when you’re afraid in a crisis like we’ve had so many in the last ten twenty
years. To not sell everything but to stick to your investments, even
though it feels very very bad at the moment. So in essence, a great financial
adviser is one who can play devil’s advocate for you.
So, returning to that tennis analogy, don’t try to play amazing cross-court
winners. Focus instead on avoiding mistakes. And, perhaps most importantly,
why not hire yourself a coach?