Four years into my experiment to see whether an educated amateur stock picker could beat the market, my Practical Investing portfolio has become an advertisement for index funds. After nearly three years of staying even with, and occasionally outpacing, my benchmark--
To be sure, these are tough times for value investors (which I consider myself to be). Not long ago, CNN Money led a story like a children's book to describe Warren Buffett's recent performance: "Warren and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year." Among Buffett's top holdings are
One manager's redemption. Meanwhile, FPA Crescent, comanaged by
I mention this not to imply that my portfolio will rise like a phoenix, as Crescent did. Rather, it's to suggest that tracking the progress of long-term goals using short-term measures doesn't make sense. We tend to measure performance over the course of a calendar year. Yet to gauge properly whether a strategy is working, you need to measure results over market cycles--from one peak to the next, with a bear market in between--not "lunar cycles or any other arbitrary metric," Romick says.
Over the past few years, growth has been in vogue, meaning investors have favored firms that typically command high, sometimes exorbitant, valuations. If I tried to buy those kinds of stocks in pursuit of beating an index over the short run, I might lose sight of my long-term goal of buying high-quality companies at fair prices.
That said, it pays to look at your progress against the market every so often and evaluate what you're doing right and what you're doing wrong. Frankly, although I'd like to think I have done some things right, a critical look at my performance reveals a glaring shortcoming: I hate to sell.
Knowing when to sell is as important as knowing what to buy. I own several stocks I should have sold in recent years, but my inherent optimism and a stubborn adherence to a buy-and-hold philosophy prevented me from pulling the trigger. I should have dumped
Many pros advise investors to review each holding periodically and ask themselves, "Would I buy that stock today?" If the answer is no, it may be time to unload. I'm taking that advice to heart. My investing resolution for 2016 is to be a better seller.
Kathy Kristof is a contributing editor at Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine.