“I have been working for almost 10 years now, earning well and investing very carefully too; Why am I not as rich as I should be? Why am I still in the middle-class circle? At least 2 in 5 clients ask me similar questions. Do you know the key reason for this?
I am listing 20 common mistakes that you may be doing. Not only the lists. I am also giving you the best and easy to follow solutions to escape from doing these mistakes. Read ahead.
Table of contents
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Mistake 1: How often do you make Investment decisions on the spot?
Mistake 2: How long do you think before choosing an investment option?
Mistake 3: How much do you understand the investment?
Mistake 4: Do you diversify your investments?
Mistake 5: Do you love the company in which you invested?
Mistake 6: Do you wait for investments to get back to their original price?
Mistake 7: Do you focus on the wrong kind of investment performance?
Mistake 8: Do you pay more investment fees?
Mistake 9: Do you make investment decisions based on tax?
Mistake 10: Do you review your investments?
Mistake 11: Do you take the wrong risk for investments?
Mistake 12: Do you know your investment’s real performance?
Mistake 13: Do you go behind returns while investing?
Mistake 14: Have you started or continued investing?
Mistake 15: Do you customize your investments?
Mistake 16: How liquid are your investments?
Mistake 17: Have you an investment goal?
Mistake 18: Do you follow social media for your investment decisions?
Mistake 19: Do you invest enough?
Mistake 20: How frequently do you take action?
Mistake 1: How often do you make investment decisions on the spot?
Assume you are sleeping peacefully. Suddenly a big thud wakes you up. How do you react in such scenarios? Be it a cat or a thief. Immediately you grab an object available near you and are ready to hit the threatening subject, right? Do you react the same way while choosing an investment plan? If so, the chances are higher for you to under perform. Instant or spontaneous investment decisions do not help you to become rich as you wish. Studies have shown that even professional investors fail to perform well when they make hasty, emotional, overly spontaneous or sudden decisions. That too while buying well-structured products like mutual funds.
How can you avoid taking decisions on the spot?
Keep a pattern while building your investment portfolio and stick to it. Be a scriptwriter to your portfolio, set a pattern in buying or selling the investment products. Do not make hasty or spontaneous decisions just because your ‘hunch’ says so.
Does this mean you just keep quiet during market fluctuations? No, not at all. Rebalance your investment portfolio periodically.
Mistake 2: How long do you think before choosing an investment option?
One of my friends recently had a tough time at work because of poor performance. He has been identified with mild diabetes where he is refrained from taking whole sugar sweets. After few months, he seems to be doing fine again. I asked if diabetes made him physically weak earlier, he said no. He has been thinking too much about not being able to eat sweets. The thought process sucked his energy and later reflected in his work. When he slowed down the thought process, he started performing well in his work.
Too much thinking is not good while taking investment decisions as well. Do you know why? You lose a lot of energy and willpower in the thinking process. You become tired at the end of it. With less energy while ‘really’ taking a decision, you end up taking the wrong one.
How can one avoid thinking too much while taking investment decisions?
Automating the thinking process will help a lot in taking the right decision. Do not waste your energy by thinking always about saving options. Strategize a plan on what are the products you would be interested in investing in. This can be done by analysing the pros and cons of various products. Choose the ones depending on your risk tolerance. Streamline your thought process by planning in steps. Once you have a basic plan, start investing in it. For example, if you feel a particular mutual fund suits your requirement, invest in it. You may start with a smaller amount. Don’t wait until you analyse all the products. Slowly increase investing more money on other options that you choose.
Mistake 3: How much do you understand the investment?
One of the successful investors, Waren buffet, warns against investing in companies whose core strategies you don’t understand. This includes the company’s products and services.
Investors think complicated products must be good, but that’s not the case. Complicated investment products are full of marketing gimmicks.
“Complexity kills transparency. Less transparency makes it easier to mis-sell.”
What should you do?
Before you could invest, understand the company and its core strategy. Understand the company’s products and services.
Also, avoid complicated investment products and investment strategies. It’s best to go for simple and easy to understand investment products that could fulfil your purpose. Make sure to buy an investment product only if you can understand it.
Mistake 4: Do you diversify your investments?
Have you been diversifying your investments? Have you not heard of the saying “Not to keep all your eggs in one basket”?
What should you do?
“Over-concentration can destroy your wealth; Over-diversification can dilute your returns. Discover the right balance.”
You should make sure to diversify your investments. Often investors think that they can maximize profits by investing a huge sum in a particular investment. But this is very risky, to have all your money in one investment.
Hence diversify, but too much diversification is also not good. You should find a balance. If needed, you can seek the help of a financial advisor.
Mistake 5: Do you love the company in which you invested?
Very often when we see a company in which we invested, perform well, we tend to fall in love with the company. We also forget that we bought the stock as an investment.
What should you do?
We buy stock to make money. If any fundamentals that made you invest in the company, change, then you should consider selling the stock. Fundamentals include both qualitative and quantitative information.
Mistake 6: Do you wait for investments to get back to their original price?
This means that you are waiting to sell a loser until it gets back to the original price. In this case, you actually lose in two ways. First is you fail to sell a loser which may, even more, lose its value. Then you lose that money which could be used for some other better investments.
What should you do?
“If you have made a mistake, cut your losses as quickly as possible.” –Bernard M.Baruch
Don’t wait for your investments to lose, even more, sell them. You could then use that money for other profitable investments.
Mistake 7: Do you focus on recent or short term investment performance?
If you are investing for the long term, then don’t focus on recent or short term performance as it makes you do short-term modifications.
What should you do?
If you are investing for the long term, and find yourself focusing on recent or short term performance, then REFOCUS. Look at the big picture. Look for factors driving long term performance. Also, look for consistently performing funds over a long term period. “Consistency scores over recent performance.”
Mistake 8: Do you pay more investment fees?
Paying too much investment fees or advisory fees is a mistake because even a little increase in fees affects your long term wealth.
What should you do?
Be aware of all the potential costs of your investment decisions. Make sure the fee is reasonable and also check if you have value for the fee you pay your advisors.
Mistake 9: Do you make investment decisions based on tax?
Making investment decisions based on the tax consequences is a mistake by investors.
How to make investment decisions?
The motivation to buy or sell an investment should not be based on the tax consequences but its merits.
Mistake 10: Do you review your investments?
If you have a diversified portfolio, it can change, some increase in value and some decrease in value though you chose them carefully. So don’t make the mistake of not reviewing your investments regularly.
What should you do?
Review your investments regularly and see whether your investments still make sense. Also, check if it needs rebalancing.
Mistake 11: Do you take blind risks while investing?
Taking blind risks is not a sign for a good investor. For eg: The investors who deposited in YES Bank and DHFL (which gave 1% to 2% higher returns compared to a normal FD) lost 100% of their principal, as YES bank and DHFL couldn’t repay their deposit holders. This is because they did not take calculated risks but blind risks.
What should you do?
Know your financial, mental and emotional ability to take risks. Also know thoroughly the risks and the consequences of the risks you are planning to take. Hence take calculated risks and avoid taking blind risks.
Mistake 12: Do you know your investment’s real performance?
Some investors don’t know how their investments have performed in relation to their portfolios.
What should you do?
You should see how your portfolio is performing in comparison to your plan and check if you are on track and if the investments make sense. Also, check the costs, inflation and tax. This way you will know how your investments are performing. Your returns must be better than what you expected.
Mistake 13: Do you go behind returns while investing?
Another big mistake investors do is chase returns. “An investment with higher returns” is what people fall for.
What should you do?
As you have already heard many times, “past performance does not guarantee future results”. Not just that, higher returns mean higher risk. So don’t neglect your risk tolerance. And remember to check your risk tolerance before chasing returns.
Mistake 14: Have you started or continued investing?
People don’t start investing because they lack the knowledge or skills of investing. People who have already invested and have faced losses feel discouraged and stop investing.
What should you do?
Don’t wait to get started. It’s easier than you think. No one is born knowing how to invest. Even if you are low on income, it’s fine, you can start with a small sum.
If you are spending all your income, and have no money to invest. Then look for ways to cut back your expenses. If needed, you can get the help of a financial planner.
To stay invested, you need to have discipline, continuous efforts and analysis. Stay committed to your investments. This will lead you to success.
Mistake 15: Do you customize your investments?
Are you a person who chooses investments based on others opinions or see what others do and follow the same?
Then it is a blunder.
Why?
Because there is no one size fits all. This is very true when you make investment decisions too. Just because an investment strategy suits someone else, doesn’t mean that will suit you as well.
What should you do?
You have to find what investments suit your financial goal. It includes your risk tolerance. So to reach your financial freedom and success you need to search for what will uniquely fit you.
Mistake 16: How liquid are your investments?
Are your investments liquid?
Will your investments be easily convertible into cash in case of a need?
Why is liquidity important?
Because you can manage risk if there is a loss, by exiting from that particular investment.
But what if there is no liquidity?
You will be forced to lose your money with further losses.
What should you do?
Don’t accept low liquid products until you have checked if you have other investments to control the risk of loss of the low liquid product.
Mistake 17: Do you have an investment goal?
Lack of proper investment goals is a common mistake by investors. It is easier for someone to mis-sell an investment product to you and the chances for you to mis-buy is also high.
What should you do?
Simple, have an investment goal and work towards achieving that goal. If you have clarity on your investment goal, it’s difficult to missell you an investment product, as you know what investment product best suits you and your investment goal. You wouldn’t fall prey to mis-selling and you also wouldn’t mis-buy an investment.
Your investment goals could be classified into short term, medium-term or long term goals. It can be your child’s education, marriage or your retirement.
Mistake 18: Do you follow social media for your investment decisions?
If you follow social media for making your investment decisions, then this is not right for you. There is a lot of misinformation, especially on social media regarding finance and investments.
What should you do?
“Focus on facts and reasoning and not on media views; expert views or insider views”
Don’t follow social media news because they don’t know your unique situation, i.e your goals, plans, risk tolerance etc. Don’t jump to blind conclusions but do your own research before you invest.
“If you have invested based on facts and reasoning when your portfolio goes up, it will boost your confidence. If you have invested based on tips or borrowed conviction when your portfolio goes up, it will boost your ego.”
Mistake 19: Do you invest enough?
If you don’t invest enough, even when you have the available resources, then that’s a mistake.
What should you do?
Whenever your resources increase, the amount you invest should also increase. There are calculators to find how much you should be saving each month to reach your financial goals. For eg: We have the children’s education calculator, dream car calculator etc, according to your specific need.
AS A THUMB RULE, 20% OF YOUR INCOME SHOULD BE SAVED AND INVESTED.
Mistake 20: How frequently do you take action?
Many investors love to think about investments. They like to read a lot about personal finance. They enjoy discussing with their friends about portfolio building. They show an enormous amount of enthusiasm in analysing different investment options. Just, thinking, reading, discussing, and analysing about investments will not change the outcome of your investments.
Then how do you make frequent actions?
If you make decisions and act based on whatever you have read, discussed, thought over, and analysed, then your outcome will change. Take financial and investment decisions and execute them as and when required.
Look out for the signs and symptoms of these mistakes and completely avoid them. This will kick start your journey towards becoming rich.
Have you started your journey?
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