The Dow Jones Fall – Why CARE?

I’m sure you’re all aware that the Dow Jones had a significant drop over night of over a thousand points. Typically the media are exaggerating the situation because whilst they say it’s the biggest drop ever in the history of the Dow Jones in percentage terms, it represents around 4.3% where there have been drops in the order of just under 8% in prior times.

More importantly and putting things in perspective Dow as at the close was back to just over 24,000 which is where the mark was in November 2017. Yes just three months ago! In July 2017, the Dow Jones was at 21,891 just over seven months ago.

So this is what our CARE Investment philosophy is all about. We need to make sure you understand that this is all about a much-needed correction and the associated volatility in the market, and not to focus on the drop. It  is not that great a drop! We are only back to where we were in November 2017 and Emmanuel Calligeris has said in a variety of recent presentations we will have more volatility in the next 12 months.

So what does CARE do for investors in these times?

1. Volatility is the friend of those people who are dollar cost averaging into a portfolio. For many of you building portfolios over a period of time, you need to understand the benefits of volatility.
2. For those in retirement mode and drawing incomes, the reserve account was established just for these times when markets are falling so you don’t have to sell assets to eat. You draw money from the reserve account and as markets recover you top up the reserve’s account again.
3. For many of you who do not need money at this time and are fully invested into your portfolios CARE’s behavioural aspects come into play. Remember that the biggest detractor from investment returns is when investors participate in poor behaviour i.e. selling at closing markets and buying back in at high’s markets.
4. CARE also reminds you about not “messing it up”! Particularly the M which refers to the media and its reporting as mentioned earlier in this post and S which again is about single issues like we’ve had in the past with Brexit and Donald Trump’s election.

If you have any concerns or questions or would like to find out more about our CARE Investment philosophy, please give us a call on 02 8188 0148 (Sydney) or 0414 583 558 (Kingscliff).

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