Are Greed and Stress Wearing You Out?
Greed and stress will wear you out these days if you let them. In fact, these two enemies of a sane and peaceful existence have really wrought havoc on some of us.
Greed's always bad, but it's especially dangerous in times like these. It's always bad because greed is, well, a sin. Greed will ruin your spiritual life and upset your mental stability. I hope you're not the type to let investing or money ruin your spiritual life - ever. Who wants to be spiritually bankrupt. Not you, right? As for mental stability, no way can you make reasonably intelligent decisions about your money if you're half-crazy. Right?
Ideally you're not one of those typical investors who bounce back and forth between greed and fear. If you are, you're probably in fear mode right now. That's bad enough. The stress caused by fear will negatively affect your decision-making ability. You'll get to the point where you'll just want to crawl under a rock and hide. Not good.
But it's even worse if you're one of those types who gets greedy when the sort of market collapse we just saw happens. I'm not saying this sort of drop won't present opportunities at some point. It might. But if you let greed get the better of you, you'll wind up doing something "aggressive" at just the wrong time.
Greedy types will be thinking that the market's down and now's the time to pile in. They'll put too much money into the stock market at the point where stocks will go up enough to get them even more juiced - at which point they'll put even more in. From there, it's only a matter of time before the market turns around and heads right back down, maybe even dropping below what they thought was "the low" for the downdraft. And that turns their greed into an even stronger fear, which will cause them to sell out their position at a loss, maybe a big loss.
(So you can maybe guess that I'm thinking we may see some more testing of the lows.)
The best thing to do during a collapse is take deep breaths. Really. If your portfolio was structured decently you're probably not taking big losses. If it wasn't already structured to avoid big losses, there's little you can do right now. The storm is still raging; don't walk out the door and into the teeth of the storm. Just take more deep breaths. Maybe go out and take a walk. Read a good book. Take in a movie. Clear your mind and make up your mind to find out how to structure your portfolio better in the future.
Of course, all of this is easy for me to say. I don't know what you'll do. Maybe you'll panic and sell whatever you've got left if the market heads down more aggressively in the coming weeks. I couldn't say.
What I can say, though, is that greed and stress will definitely screw up your thinking and decision-making. Fear's not going to help much either.
So make your mind up to make a change. Do whatever it takes to get out of the cycle of stress caused by greed and fear. Use your better judgment from now on. Get yourself in a position where there's as little stress as possible for you coming from your investments. And if you're not sure what to do at the moment, the best thing is probably to just do nothing.
These stock market crashes are a real pain in the butt, aren't they?
Greed's always bad, but it's especially dangerous in times like these. It's always bad because greed is, well, a sin. Greed will ruin your spiritual life and upset your mental stability. I hope you're not the type to let investing or money ruin your spiritual life - ever. Who wants to be spiritually bankrupt. Not you, right? As for mental stability, no way can you make reasonably intelligent decisions about your money if you're half-crazy. Right?
Ideally you're not one of those typical investors who bounce back and forth between greed and fear. If you are, you're probably in fear mode right now. That's bad enough. The stress caused by fear will negatively affect your decision-making ability. You'll get to the point where you'll just want to crawl under a rock and hide. Not good.
But it's even worse if you're one of those types who gets greedy when the sort of market collapse we just saw happens. I'm not saying this sort of drop won't present opportunities at some point. It might. But if you let greed get the better of you, you'll wind up doing something "aggressive" at just the wrong time.
Greedy types will be thinking that the market's down and now's the time to pile in. They'll put too much money into the stock market at the point where stocks will go up enough to get them even more juiced - at which point they'll put even more in. From there, it's only a matter of time before the market turns around and heads right back down, maybe even dropping below what they thought was "the low" for the downdraft. And that turns their greed into an even stronger fear, which will cause them to sell out their position at a loss, maybe a big loss.
(So you can maybe guess that I'm thinking we may see some more testing of the lows.)
The best thing to do during a collapse is take deep breaths. Really. If your portfolio was structured decently you're probably not taking big losses. If it wasn't already structured to avoid big losses, there's little you can do right now. The storm is still raging; don't walk out the door and into the teeth of the storm. Just take more deep breaths. Maybe go out and take a walk. Read a good book. Take in a movie. Clear your mind and make up your mind to find out how to structure your portfolio better in the future.
Of course, all of this is easy for me to say. I don't know what you'll do. Maybe you'll panic and sell whatever you've got left if the market heads down more aggressively in the coming weeks. I couldn't say.
What I can say, though, is that greed and stress will definitely screw up your thinking and decision-making. Fear's not going to help much either.
So make your mind up to make a change. Do whatever it takes to get out of the cycle of stress caused by greed and fear. Use your better judgment from now on. Get yourself in a position where there's as little stress as possible for you coming from your investments. And if you're not sure what to do at the moment, the best thing is probably to just do nothing.
These stock market crashes are a real pain in the butt, aren't they?
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