In 1994, Arthur Ziekel, Director of Merrill Lynch Mutual Funds, wrote a simple, thoughtful letter (see below) to his daughter about investing. Long before headlines moved at the speed of social media and markets were tracked minute by minute, his message focused on patience, discipline, and common sense. More than 30 years later, his words feel just as relevant today and I felt they were worth sharing.
APPENDIX
MEMORANDUM
FROM: Arthur Zeikel (Father)
TO: Jill Anne Zeikel (Daughter)
DATE: October 17, 1994
RE: MANAGING YOUR OWN PORTFOLIO
COMMON SENSE INVESTING
It’s what you learn after you
know it all that counts.
….Earl Weaver
Personal portfolio management is not a competitive sport. It’s, instead, an important individualized effort to achieve some predetermined financial goal balancing one’s risk tolerance level with the desire to enhance capital wealth. Good investment management practices are complex, and time consuming, requiring discipline, patience and consistency of application. Too many investors fail to follow some simple, time-tested tenets that improve the odds of achieving success, while at the same time reducing the anxiety naturally associated with an uncertain undertaking.
Hopefully, the following will help.
A fool and his money are soon parted.
Investment capital becomes a perishable commodity if not handled properly.
Be serious. Pay attention to your financial affairs. Take an active, intensive interest. If you don’t, why should anyone else?
There is no free lunch.
Risk and return are interrelated. Set reasonable objectives using history as a guide. All returns relate to inflation. Better to be safe
than sorry. Never up, never in.
Most investors underestimate the stress of a high risk portfolio on the way down.
Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.
Diversify. Asset allocation determines the rate of return. Stocks beat bonds over time.
Never over reach for yield.
Remember, leverage works both ways. More money has been lost searching for yield than at the point of a gun. (Ray DeVoe)
Spend interest, never principal.
If at all possible, take out less than comes in. Then, a portfolio grows in value and last forever. The other way around, it can be
diminished quite rapidly.
You cannot eat relative performance.
Measure results on a total return, portfolio basis, against your own objectives, not someone else’s.
Don’t be afraid to take a loss.
Mistakes are part of the game. The cost price of a security is a matter of historical insignificance, of interest only to the IRS.
Averaging down, which is different from dollar cost averaging, means the first decision was a mistake. It’s a technique used to avoid
admitting a mistake or to recover a loss against the odds. When in doubt, get out. The first loss is not only the best, but usually the
smallest.
Watch out for fads.
Hula hoops and bowling alleys (among others) didn’t last. There are no permanent shortages (or oversupply). Every trend creates its
own countervailing force. Expect the unexpected.
Act.
Make decisions. No amount of information can remove all uncertainty. Have confidence in your moves. Better to be approximately
right than precisely wrong.
Take the long view.
Don’t panic under short-term transitory developments. Stick to your plan. Prevent emotion from overtaking reason. Market timing
generally doesn’t work. Recognize the rhythm of events.
Remember the value of common sense.
There is no system that works all of the time. History is a guide, not a template.
This is all you really need to know.
Love,
Dad