Steve's Investing Insights

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Play It Again, Steve – Timeless Financial Tips #2: Rising Above the Noisy News

In investing and life, information overload, aka “noisy news,” has long been a thing. In fact, before the Internet came along, I used to publish a hardcopy newsletter called “Rising Above the Noise.” Because even then, investors seemed awash in TMI (too much information).

If media noise was a problem back then, imagine the implications today. Which brings me to today’s Play It Again, Steve – Timeless Financial Tip #2.

To be a successful investor, it’s as important as ever to dial down all the noisy news you invite into your head.

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Play It Again, Steve – Timeless Financial Tips #1: Repeat After Me: “It’s Already Priced In”

Whenever you try to buy low or sell high, who is the force on the other side of the trading table? It’s the market. The market includes millions of individuals, institutions, banks, and brokerages trading hundreds of billions of dollars every moment of every day. It includes highly paid analysts continuously watching every move the markets make. It includes AI-driven engines seeking to get their trades in nanoseconds ahead of everyone else.

And you think you can beat that? We believe it’s far more reasonable to assume, by the time you’ve heard the news, the collective market has too, and has already priced it in.

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2023 New Year Insights from an Independent Financial Advisor

After years of focused financial planning, 2022 (and the previous few years) may feel like it’s upended your financial future.

Although 2022 gave us unwelcome results, weathering these market storms does take some dedicated resolve to stay on course to meet your long-term financial goals.

So, with this new year upon us, let’s round up some of the best blogs from 2022 to help support your 2023 financial planning decisions.

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What Is the Cost of a Financial Advisor?

If organizing your financial interests has become an endless game of whack-a-mole, the cost of a financial advisor might be worth it to help you tame the tangle.

Remember that it’s better to focus on the value that the cost of a financial advisor brings you. “Free Advice” can cost you. Fee-based advice allows you to become the boss of your financial interests. Also, the cost of an independent financial advisor should cover far more than merely helping you buy or sell this or that security in your investment portfolio. Determine what the long-term value of financial advice is worth to you.

Check out these insights that you can use to assess the value of independent financial advice vs. just looking at the cost of a financial advisor.

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This Is Your Investment Brain on Pessimism

Have you been reading the headlines, viewing your investment portfolio, and assuming the worst is yet to come? Welcome to your painful crash course on what market risk really looks like—and more importantly, how it feels.

Most investors say they’re ok living with periodic market risk, as long as it helps them achieve better returns over the long run. We accept (in theory) that tolerating the interim damage done to our own investment portfolios will help us meet our long-term financial goals.

But that’s investment risk in theory. Since it’s been a long time since we’ve encountered an extended bear market climate, you may have forgotten or never known the reality of it. It may not have clicked then, when significant market declines happen, it is usually due to despairingly bad news … amplified by headlines screaming how things are only going to get worse from here.

The reality is, when we’re in the middle of a storm of stuff, our behavioural biases make it very difficult to believe we’ll ever see better days.

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