“Blow up your TV throw away your paper”- John Prine Spanish Pipedream
Yesterday was my lucky day. I received two emails, literally less than 15 minutes apart. The first had an article recommending that now was the time to dump your emerging market bonds. Being human, I responded with fear. Do they know something important that should cause us to sell before Armageddon? I did not go to the article to read it, but….it had succeeded-I felt a bit of stress!
The second article hitting my mail box had a bit different message-it said that the smart money was buying emerging market bonds now. Well, don’t I want to be one of the smart guys? Greed and a bit of smugness could be felt. Best of all, the stress of the first email was dissipating! I would rather be smart than join the herd and jump ship!
Of course, it struck me that this was simply a microcosm of what we are bombarded with all day every day. There was no article saying that emerging market bonds were a reasonable investment to hold for the long term at current pricing, yielding a decent return. And there never will be!! No stress, no drama, no article. Just think how much verbiage (aka garbage) has to be spilled into the public domain daily to fill multiple cable business channels, papers, emails, webinars, etc. As it is rather dull, very little of it has to do with the expected long term returns of an investment. The only thing we should care about is earnings and earnings growth, dividends, and changes in valuation.
The daily market is a mood ring, reflecting the emotions of the market which is busily sifting through all this nonsense on a daily basis. During the long periods that we will be investors, the return on our investment are the only things that matter.
Turn off your CNBC, take a walk. Enjoy spring!
By Ted Schwartz, CFP©