… especially today.
And yet… I knew this day would come.
Was reading about a “new” way to trade stocks: a brokerage firm pimping trading and investing based on – wait for it – Fibonacci analysis.
Why does this matter?
I dunno. It doesn’t, really… unless you happen to be investing with a firm that’s using arbitrary mathematical formulas to invest your money. This sort of rationalistic approach to investing seems really cool… like it’s so complex and “sophisticated”, it must be true.
Some people are really very addicted to complexity. Anything that is new, whiz-bang, high-tech, or has some kind of complex algorithm behind it, must mean it works.
Simple is… well… simple.
Sort of reminds me of the folks who used to base investment decisions on the outcome of the Superbowl.
OK, enough shenanigans, let’s get down to serious business.
Insured or guaranteed savings means you’ll have exactly what you expect in the future.
Anything that’s not guaranteed to be there in the future is a matter of probability — some of which can be calculated mathematically, but often… it comes down to educated (and sometimes uneducated) guesses.
And often times, it’s not even that good. Often, it’s pure dumb luck that an investing idea “works”.
I dunno about you, but to me, risking everything on luck doesn’t seem like a good idea.
Probabilities get very complicated, very quickly. It’s not a matter of 50% chance of success or failure or even 20% chance of failure. There are probabilities of success and failure and multiple probabilities within each probability of success or failure, and magnitude of risks being taken within each of those probabilities.
For example, a strategy might have a 80% of working, but within that 80% probability, there might be a 90% probability of it barely moving the needle or barely making a difference at all.
I’m not saying you can’t operate that way. I’m saying if you want to account for all possible future outcomes, you *must* be able to predict your own future with enough precision that there’s no real guesswork about how things will work out.
Anyway, if you’d rather not take those kinds of chances, then go book an appointment so you can have me look over your finances. You and I will collaborate and come up with a real plan that really works, no kidding.