I still have vivid memories of my first market decline when I was working as a stockbroker. For the first two years of my career, nearly everything I recommended was going up. I was proud of the value I thought I was providing to my clients and impressed with how smart I was.

By 1969, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was getting close to an all-time high of 1,000. Then it started to decline and just kept going down. It eventually dropped almost 40%.

The situation hit me hard. I felt so bad about the losses my clients were experiencing that I couldn’t sleep and had stomach problems. To make things worse, a lot of my early clients were friends of my parents. When I would go home for a visit, I would call ahead and ask my parents to move their car out of the garage so I could park there and close the door behind me. I didn’t want my parents’ neighbors to know I was home because I couldn’t face questions about why their stocks were doing so poorly. I really didn’t know what to say because I didn’t have an answer. It was during this period that I spent one afternoon hiding out in the movie theater watching a Clint Eastwood triple feature!

Eventually, I went to my manager and asked for advice: What can I do? What should I say? He was surprised by my questions and responded bluntly with, “Keep trading stocks.” That was my job, after all. We were brokers, not financial advisors. We were paid to trade stocks because trading created revenue for our firm whether the stocks went up or down in our clients’ accounts.

Then he added something that turned out to be good advice for me. He said that if the market decline was bothering me that much, I should quit my job and go work in a bank trust department. He was right. I wasn’t interested in selling stocks to help a firm make money whether or not my clients won or lost..I left my brokerage job shortly thereafter.

Obviously, I’ve experienced many more market downturns since that fateful time…because that’s simply what the market does. We just can’t accurately predict when. In fact, there have been 10 times when the market declined more than 20% in the past 50 years—with the two most recent happening in 2007-2009 (down 55%) with the financial crisis and in March 2020 (down 35% in 21 days) with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Lesson Learned: Expect that the market will decline and ignore it when it does. 

History shows that market declines are inevitable—higher equity returns wouldn’t be possible without the risk of occasional downturns. Also, market declines are temporary. When you remember these two facts, you’re less likely to let your emotions get in the way of your long-term investing strategy. After all, a loss isn’t a loss until you sell your position.

Of course, ignoring market downturns is easier said than done. I admit that I still feel anxious during these periods, and I know that many investors experience the same sleeplessness and pit-in-the-stomach sensations I felt back in 1969. Today, though, I’m not afraid to face my clients when the markets are bad.

Instead, I like to initiate calls during these rough periods just to ask how they’re feeling and to give them better advice than I could have 50 years ago. Instead of recommending new stock trades, I tell them to do nothing – except the occasional rebalance. This downturn, like others before it, will pass.

Also, I’ve learned, and communicated to all that will listen…especially our clients…to focus on what you can control. The market is not controllable. Your investing philosophy, asset allocation, and personal spending and savings are in your control. Focus your attention, energy, and actions there. And leave the rest to us.

My excitement about investing led me to pursue a role as a stockbroker in Philadelphia right after I completed my MBA. Back in the late 1960s, almost no one bought mutual funds. As a broker, I made recommendations to my clients about which stocks to buy. Then, the trend was to bet big on the next ‘winner’ – not too dissimilar from today’s speculation around cryptocurrency.

As a young broker, I had worked hard to save $3,000. I was ready to invest my money the same way I invested my client’s money. I looked over the recommended stocks list, researched, and narrowed my options down to two companies. One was a mobile home company, and the other was an airline that delivered oil drilling equipment to Alaska’s north slope.

Both stocks were selling at $30 a share. With my $3,000, I could buy a full lot (100 shares) of either one. The airline stock had a more exciting story, so I bought that one.

I watched both stocks closely over the next several months. Unfortunately, the airline stock took a severe nosedive, falling to $3 a share, a whopping 90% loss, while the mobile home stock doubled to $60 a share. After many agonizing days, weeks, and months, I sold my airline investment for $300, suffering a loss of $2,700.

With my annual salary of $9,000, my finances took a significant hit. I just blew up my nest egg! I kicked myself for not buying the mobile home stock and earning $6,000 – a net difference of $5,700! That much money could have changed my life. I could have bought a nice car, taken a European vacation, or used the money for other exciting adventures. Regret reigned supreme. Mainly I questioned why I didn’t split my investment by buying 50 shares of each company – at least then I would have spread out my risk.

Lesson Learned: Diversification can help you get better results with less stress.

Diversification is a way to spread your risk, increasing the chances of your exposure to potential winners; a way to own the haystack rather than searching for the needles. Also, different countries and sectors perform differently at different times – it’s almost impossible to predict when each will have its day in the sun. If you are deeply diversified, you increase your chance of owning the winners, and at the right time.

Back then, I would have told you I was investing. With the wisdom that comes with age, I now know that I was gambling. Why? I put all my eggs in one basket by betting on one company. Also, even though the insight helped me learn my lesson, I would never call buying two stocks proper diversification. Today, our clients have access to expertly-designed mutual funds that make it easy to own around 13,000 stocks from around the globe. A strategy that is much better than betting on one airline!

I was lucky to learn early on that – both financially and emotionally – diversification deserves a key place in any long-term investment strategy. No one can accurately predict which investments will win and which will lose, and take it from me, you can drive yourself crazy watching to see whether your bets are going to pay off.

Don’t want to wait for the next lesson, set up a time to talk here.

“Typically, harvests happen seasonally. Strawberries ripen in the spring, corn is eye-high by the Fourth of July, those grapes get stomped in the fall, and chestnuts roast on winter fires.

Tax-loss harvesting is different. Those familiar with the strategy mistakenly assume that losses are best harvested at year-end when taxes are top of mind. In reality, tax-loss harvests can happen whenever market conditions and your best interests warrant it.”

From a 2016 post we did on tax-loss harvesting.

Unlike many advisors and do-it-yourself investors, we are on the lookout for tax-loss harvesting opportunities throughout the year. Many people (if they harvest at all) only harvest losses once per year, usually at the last minute in late December. Not us, not you if you’re a Hill Investment Group client. Remember the market decline in March 2020? If your advisor waited until December to harvest your losses, they were likely wiped away. 2020 is a perfect example of why, at HIG, we are opportunistic when it comes to harvest time.

The big question folks have debated is how much all this work is worth? How do we quantify the benefit to you? The Wall Street Journal caught our attention with Derek Horstmeyer’s report claiming the value to be more than 1%. The estimates go even higher if your tax rate is at the top end. If their estimates are somewhere in the ballpark, harvesting looks like a sound strategy year-round with the potential to show you some real money.

You can read about the study here.