Over the weekend, I had a chance to sit down with Ed Coburn, CEO of Cabot Wealth Network. It was a beautiful spring day in historic Salem, Massachusetts overlooking the harbor where the annual arrival of boats on moorings was in full swing.
I spoke with Ed about his thoughts on the market and what investors should be doing now to position themselves to preserve and grow their wealth. What follows are highlights from our conversation.
Brad: 2022 was a rough year for the market, and 2023 has seen continued choppiness as well. How should investors think about investing now?
Ed: Yes, last year was much less fun for most investors than the previous decade had been. Of course, we were on an historically long bull run and most people knew it would come to an end. I will note that it was tough on some younger investors whose only experience was in a bull market and who learned that buying on the dips doesn’t always work out.
This year has chopped around but has had plenty of opportunity for growth. I think that’s a really important note for people. Last year many investors, and in fact many of our analysts at Cabot, took some of their chips off the table, increasing the cash in their portfolios. That can make a lot of sense in conditions like what we saw.
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But, the mistake that we see many individual investors make is taking too long to get back in. Yes, fixed-income investing (bonds) has risen from the ashes, and Apple’s new savings account is paying over 4%. At the same time, my personal account is up 6.79% this year and my investments are moderately aggressive at best. I will admit the chart of my account has not been a straight line up. I’ve seen a handful of ups and downs since January, but the net has been a good, if not great, return in just a few months.
To answer your question, it is a mistake to be sitting on the sidelines in cash. I understand the desire to not be fully deployed in the market, but we also know that historically, playing it “safe” has been a sure way to underperform. So, I think savvy investors should at least have a few toes, or even a whole foot, back in the water.
Brad: What are your thoughts on recession?
Ed: We say it often here, but no one has a crystal ball and that certainly includes me. I will say that with unemployment so low, wages rising, and inflation falling the fabled “soft landing” seems to be an increasingly real possibility.
Brad: If people have been out of the market partially, or even completely, how should they approach getting back in? It is still a fraught time, and nothing cools the enthusiasm like getting back into a new position to see it promptly drop 15 or 20%.
Ed: Markets like this are when successful investors make a lot of money. In the depths of the great recession, a gentleman by the name of Warren Buffett placed some big bets that worked out very well for him. Of course, he didn’t buy just any stocks. There was a lot of research seasoned with an appropriate timeline and of course a dash of risk tolerance.
The answer to your question, and I realize this will sound self-serving from someone who runs an investment research and advisory firm, but this is the kind of market where the guidance of an expert generally pays the greatest dividends.
An expert with deep experience looking at key indicators, who is familiar chart trends, and spends considerable time reviewing financials and studying management will see opportunities and potential problems that may not be as readily available to less-experienced investors. That added expertise can pay big dividends by helping an individual investor feel more comfortable buying and helping them buy opportunities with lower risk.
Cabot analysts add value in any market, but this is the kind of market where the payoff from having expert guidance is the greatest.
Brad: Has the end of this long bull market changed the investing strategy, and if so, how?
Ed: Yes, the strategy is different. We’ve seen rotation into and out of certain sectors. For instance, Tech, which was out of favor for much of last year, is clearly back in favor and up 20% this year. There are chances to make money holding stocks for a few weeks. And there are certainly opportunities to buy “forever” stocks now knowing that over a longer period of time, the dust will settle, and they will do fine. It’s the intermediate holding periods where you have to be watching much more closely. Setting stop losses and selling on strength to take partial profits is even more important in this market.
Brad: As the Managing Editor and Chief Analyst for this Cabot Wealth Daily newsletter, I try to expose readers to a range of investing strategies and approaches. As the publisher, what’s your goal for this publication?
Ed: It’s somewhat of a cliché but a well-informed investor is our best customer. So, we want to provide a service that educates people on how to be better investors and provides them with market insights. And we do this by regularly exposing readers to all of our analysts.
One additional benefit of Cabot Wealth Daily that we don’t talk about as much is that subscribers get exclusive special discount offers, early access, and notice of free reports available for download. Not bad for a free newsletter.
Brad: If you read the papers or listen to commentators on TV and the Internet, you are likely to hear a lot of doom and gloom. What’s your take on that?
Ed: People love to play on human emotion, and fear is the strongest motivator there is, so doom and gloom sells. It’s easy to spin a scary story, talk about how the sky is falling.
That has never been Cabot’s approach though. I’m not saying we think everything is rosy all the time. Of course, it’s not. But, in the long run, the market goes up. And even in the shorter run, it goes up more often than it goes down.
At Cabot, we strive to provide our customers with context, tools, and tips they can use to become more successful investors.
Educating our customers about the dynamics of the market, teaching them with proven strategies for investing, and providing them with well-researched stock recommendations is what Cabot has been doing since 1970. In that time, we’ve seen bulls and bears and we’ve helped investors protect and grow their wealth in just about any conceivable market. That’s what has kept us in business for more than 50 years.
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