FYI: A combination of volatile market conditions and bad timing caused the average U.S. investor to lose twice as much as the S&P 500 in 2018, according to a new study from DALBAR.
The research firm’s latest Quantitative Analysis of Investor Behavior (QAIB) found that investors were actually blown away by market turmoil last year, losing 9.42 percent over the course of 2018, compared with a 4.38 percent retreat by the S&P.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.fa-mag.com/news/u-s--investors-lost-twice-as-much-as-the-s-p-500-in-2018-43995.html?print
Comments
DALBAR has been providing this useful service for many years. And for these many years the numbers and stats change, but the basic conclusion does not. With a few exceptions, investors suck. We underperform the various Indices most of the time. Here is a year old Link that makes the case:
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/americans-are-still-terrible-at-investing-annual-study-once-again-shows-2017-10-19
This story is frequently repeated. You might be interested in more detail, so here is a Link to a recent DALBAR report:
https://content.swanglobalinvestments.com/hubfs/Third Party Documents/Dalbar 2018 QAIB Report - Quantitative Analysis of Investor Behavior - Advisor Edition.pdf
As a general observation, you can improve your returns by trading less, using low cost mutual funds, and allow your wife to make the investment decisions. The data demonstrate that many of us don’t follow these simple rules. Easy to say, but hard to implement.
Good luck to all of us. We need it since our skills are insufficient.
Best Wishes
Seems to me it didn’t just evaporate in mid-air or all of it go into the coffers of the brokerage houses and mutual fund companies. Where’d it end up?
I suspect that the differentials quoted are associated with the difference between price and money. The price is what someone believes an offered product is worth. If a buyer actually makes a deal that turns price into money.
If I make something and offer it to the public for 10 dollars (price), but it only sells(money) for 5 dollars money was not lost. Actual money never existed when the asking price was offered.
I hope this helps.
Best Wishes
- You sold a share of Netflix to me in July at $350.
- I panicked and sold that share to @msf in December at $200.
- msf sold it back to you again last week for $350. For you it was “0 sum” since your brokerage costs were covered by the interest you earned on the money over the 7 months between selling Netflix and buying it back.
The Math:
- You broke even.
- msf gained $150.
- I lost $150.
That’s a zero sum series of transactions. For the sake of argument let’s overlook brokerage costs. I don’t think they would account for the magnitude of the paper losses the Dalbar report references.
Still wondering where all the lost money went?
Just the way I interpreted his point.
edit: Actually maybe the stock market isn't a net sum balance. Sometimes a collection of stocks, an index, may be worth a trillion dollars. Other times it may be worth 900 billion. Where did that missing money go? I guess until average- Joe cashes in a loss or gain, it's just a calculated value on paper. To deep for me.
Thanks for replying. I’m not asking “How can money just “disappear” when markets drop. I’d agree with you that sometimes an investor’s losses are attributable to a depreciation in the paper value of the underlying assets. (The ‘29 crash is often cited to support this idea.)
But the Dalbar findings suggest something quite different at work. It seems to imply that even when changes in stock values are taken into effect, U.S. investors managed to lose twice as much as the S&P lost in 2018. Simply saying there are a lot of “bad investors” can’t explain that. Per my earlier illustration, for every investor who bought high and sold a stock (or mutual fund) low, there is (in aggregate) another “investor” who sold the security high and bought it back low. Net-net, investors as a group broke-even by trading.
What might be happening:
- The S&P is an index absent any operating fees. Investors, by contrast, pay an assortment of fees to invest. Those fees come out of their potential gains - or add to their losses during bad markets.
- The S&P is specific to U.S. large-cap companies. Investors, by contrast, often diversify into non-U.S. companies, emerging markets, commodities and bonds (to name a few). Emerging markets, in particular, had a very poor year in 2018.
- The S&P holds no cash Most investors and funds maintain some cash for liquidity purposes.
- Most imortantly, I’d say, the S&P index has far outdistanced value stocks which many actively managed mutual funds seek out. It looks like the trend is beginning to turn. Possibly active management will outpace the S&P one of these years.