Coronavirus and the Perils of Pricing Stocks for Perfection

The past week's tailspin of stocks into a correction is a reminder that the law of gravity has not been repealed in the financial world.  Until just recently, the high flying stock market, having steadily risen since 2009, was priced for perfection:  everything had to go well or gravity would assert itself.  In such circumstances, bad news can have an outsized effect.

Not surprisingly, the trigger for the downturn was a black swan--a stock market term for an unexpected event that is very bad for the market.  Typically, black swans are the triggering events for sudden market nosedives.  The 2008 bear market that coincided with the beginning of the Great Recession was triggered by losses hitting a poorly understood cobweb of linkages between and among the real estate, mortgage, bond and derivatives markets that concentrated real estate lending risks into the heart of the financial system.  Large mortgage losses were magnified into a tsunami of financial pain by daisy chains of supposedly offsetting derivatives contracts that wound up consolidating risk instead of dispersing it.

Coronavirus (or COVID-19) is today's black bird.  It calamitously began in the world's factory, China.  This meant that it would spread quickly because so much global commerce--and therefore global travel--would circulate through China.  Its high rate of transmission was not fully appreciated at first, and those giving early warning were treated as Cassandras instead of being taken seriously.  So the disease spread quickly and a massive shutdown of major parts of China was imposed.  Commerce slowed precipitously and corporate losses are piling up fast.  The World Health Organization has warned that the disease has become a very high risk.  In short, coronavirus is on the verge of becoming a pandemic, and the prognosis is guarded.

The stock market finally got the message, and had a hissy fit, dropping into a correction in five trading days.  More losses are likely in the near term future.  Opinion is divided on whether the current market is a buying opportunity or a septic facility to be avoided.  If you're set on putting money into this market, make sure it's money you won't need for at least ten years.  Medical science is getting a better understanding of COVID-19 by the day, and chances seem good that eventually we will learn to cope with the disease and contain its impact.  But when that day will be remains speculative, and you should speculate only with long term money that you can afford to lose.

Managing Personal Risk

Modern businesses put a lot of effort into managing risk.  They take risks, because that's how they might make big money.  But they also work to mitigate the downsides of their risks, because employee stock options don't pay off real well if the CEO, or someone or something else, blows up the business.

Individuals need to manage risk as well.  Bankruptcies most often result from unexpected problems, like a medical crisis or job loss.  If you don't deal with the ways that life can fall apart, the chances of your life fallling apart increase. The need to manage personal risk may be one of the most under-appreciated aspects of financial planning. While there's no perfect or complete way to analyze personal risk, here are some things to think about.

Age.  As you grow older, reduce risk.  If anything goes wrong, you will have less time to recover, and less ability to recover as your value in the labor force declines (and it eventually will).  There are variety of ways to reduce risk discussed below.  The important point is that as time passes and you accumulate more gray hair, reduce personal risk.

Occupation.  Your occupation can be a major risk factor.  Some types of work can't be performed by older people.  This would include construction, law enforcement, military service, fire fighting and other jobs that demand physical strength and endurance.  It could also include jobs that don't demand physical strength, but do require certain abilities that deteriorate with age, such as flying, working as an air traffic controller, or performing surgery.   If your job has a relatively limited time span, start building wealth at an early age and persist.  You may be able to have a second career when the first one ends.  But then again, maybe not.  Don't count on what's highly uncertain.  Assume your first occupation is all that you'll ever have and base your financial planning on it.

Employment stability.  If your job security is unstable, build up a large pool of savings to tide you over the rough spots.  A year's worth of living expenses, or more, in an emergency fund would be a good idea.  If you work in a boom-bust industry, like construction or oil and gas drilling, or an unpredictable job, like entertainment, your savings account is your best friend.  If you have to take on debts, or lose a car and/or house, because you didn't prepare for a layoff, your long term financial future may be cloudy.

Health.  Factor into your financial planning your health problems, especially any chronic ones you have.  There is no way to avoid having health problems, especially as you get older.  That's why having health insurance is so important--you will definitely use it.  Also have some savings available for health care expenses not covered by insurance--these expenses are one of the leading reasons for personal bankruptcy filings.  If your health is good, save plenty because you may need to finance a long life span. 

Debts.  Debts are one of the most dangerous risks.  Jobs may not be secure, but debts, once incurred, are a certainty.  If you're poor, but debt free, you won't end up in bankruptcy.  Poverty doesn't lead to bankruptcy; unmanageable debts do.  But debts are also one of the most controllable risks.  Avoid taking on debt unless it's really necessary.  Pay off debts as quickly as possible, especially as you get older.  A mortgage-free house is better than a sleeping pill.  There are some financial planners who will tell you to have a mortgage and invest your cash in stocks.  Well, if stocks maintained a nice, steady upward trend all the time, this might well be a smart move.  But if stocks are sometimes volatile--well, some people do manage to eat dog food.  Avoid debt and you avoid risk.

Moral and voluntary obligations.  Lots of people help their kids pay for college--and then help some more when the kids rebound home after graduating.  Many help their aged parents.  Quite a few help siblings, nieces, nephews, friends and so on when the going gets tough.  If you are likely to accept these obligations, manage your finances to be able to meet them.  Being nice can be a major financial risk factor. 

Riskiness of your assets.  This isn't quite the same as asset allocation.  This is preparing for things to go wrong with your choice of assets.  Don't think your allocation is necessarily right.  Almost no one predicted the financial crisis of 2008 and hundreds of millions of savers worldwide got a big tummy ache as a result.  If you really think that you and your financial planner have it all figured out, contact me about buying a very nice bridge in Brooklyn, and at a bargain price, too.

But back to the first point.  Stress test your investments (see http://blogger.uncleleosden.com/2010/11/stress-test-your-retirement.html).  If you are uncomfortable with the potential losses you could incur, change your allocation.  Of course, no matter what you do, you'll end up with some kind of allocation.  The important thing is to end up with something that you can live with on good days and bad.  

Insurance.  Only Congress is less popular than insurance companies.  But having some insurance coverage is important to mitigating risks.  We've already covered health insurance.  Have homeowners or renter's coverage.  Maintain plenty of liability coverage on your auto policy, and buy an umbrella policy if you have a significant net worth.  Get disability coverage (first check to see what your employer offers, and supplement it if appropriate).  If you have dependents, like minor children, buy life insurance.  Think about long term care coverage if you have significant assets.  Granted, writing a check to an insurance company feels like eating sawdust.  But if life takes a u-turn, it's comforting to be able to forward the bill to an insurance company.

Boost your benefits.  Work as long as possible to build up your Social Security credits and any pension benefits for which you are eligible.  Okay, Congress, the White House, City Hall, the boss, or somebody is always threatening to trim or take away these benefits.  But they will very likely survive in one form or another, and you benefit from maximizing them because they may offer the best shelter available when cold economic winds blow.

The Central Banks' Failure to Eliminate Risk

Now, it's Cyprus--tiny Cyprus, with 0.2% of the EU's GDP--that's shaking up the financial world.  The Asian stock markets are falling on Monday, March 18, 2013, and stock futures indicate that the European and U.S. stock markets are also headed downward.  Runs have already started at Cyprus' banks, and a bank holiday was declared for Monday, in order to stop the outflow of rats from the ship. 

The proximate cause of the panic is a proposed EU bailout for Cyprus that includes taking from depositors at its banks 6.7% of deposits under 100,000 Euros, and 9.9% of deposits exceeding 100,000 Euros.  Surprisingly, this tax (which is to help pay for the bailout) would hit small depositors that were supposed to be fully insured up to 100,000 Euros.  The bailout violates a sacrosanct principle of bank regulation--that deposit insurance cannot be impaired.  Deposit insurance is the key to depositor confidence, and the foundation of commercial banking.  America's banking system recovered from the Great Depression (which saw thousands--yes, thousands--of bank failures) only when deposit insurance was instituted.  If you scare depositors, an entire banking system can go belly up in less time than it takes to scramble a couple of eggs.

The powers that be which fashioned the Cyprus bailout--the EU, the European Central Bank and the IMF--imposed the depositor tax because of the somewhat shady doings of Cypriot banks.  They extended the scope of their businesses way beyond their home island, accumulating assets amounting to twice the size of Cyprus' GDP.  Reportedly, around half of their deposits are from Russians, and suspicions of money laundering, tax evasion, and other alleged shenanigans lurk.  The stolid burghers of northern Europe have been wrinkling their noses over the unsavory aromas rising from Cyprus' banks, and they evidently view a tax on depositors as fair compensation for the trouble the EU is now being put to.

Whether or not the deposit tax is fair is, from a commercial standpoint, pretty much irrelevant.  The financial markets thrive on confidence.  The EU's financial crisis eased last summer when the head of the European Central Bank said, in substance if not words, that he would authorize the printing of money to prop up failing EU member nations.  The bond vigilantes backed down.  But the Cyprus bailout's tax on deposits is the opposite of money printing, and implies that losses are possible for holders of deposits in banks at other weak EU nations.  There's nothing that shakes confidence like the prospect of losses, especially if one was supposed to be insured against them. 

The financial markets have been coasting on a mellow buzz from toking up on central bank monetary accommodation.  Ultra low interest rates and quantitative easing have taken the edge off volatility, and the markets seem to know no fear.  But there is no way to eliminate financial risk.  You can only transfer it somewhere.  The Cypriots apparently wanted to transfer the risks and costs of their bankruptcy as far north as they could.  But the folks up north didn't seem to cotton to that notion.  So the risks and costs blew back, and as we now see, blowback can be nasty. 

Who knows how this will all end.  No doubt high ranking officials on both sides of the Atlantic are engaged, even as we write, in frantic discussions to figure out how to prevent the spread of financial contagion.  The baseline problem is that the EU as a whole hasn't decided how to allocate the costs of resolving its financial crisis.  This is probably a harder problem than the resolution of the U.S. government's current dysfunction, since, in Europe, people from disparate countries and cultures must somehow find common ground.  Since these are the same people who fought two horrendous World Wars against each other in the 20th Century, it remains unclear if they will succeed.

In the meantime, remember that central bank monetary policy can provide a methadone high, at best.  It won't last forever, and the aftermath may be a real downer.  It's fine to feel good about the financial markets right now.  But keep in mind that the central banks cannot eliminate financial risk, and if you relax your vigilance, risk could bite your left ankle in a flash.

Idolatry in the Financial Markets

A lot of investors, it would appear, are throwing money at increasingly esoteric investments in order to prevent inflation from eroding their capital.  Junk bonds, asset-backed securities and real estate investment trusts have become fashionable.  With the Fed waging a 24/7 scorched earth campaign against positive interest rates, risk is being embraced.  One can only hope that the end result isn't like embracing a cobra--"risk on" investing strategies aren't risk-free.

A false premise widely circulated by financial sales people and cable TV pundits is that you have to preserve your savings from the ravages of inflation.  And, certainly, over long periods of time, inflation can significantly diminish your capital.  But you can't overlook the costs and risks of trying to protect yourself from inflation.  If those risks smack down your net worth, you haven't accomplished anything except lose money and then suffer inflation's death of a thousand cuts.  There's nothing wrong with losing a little ground now and then to inflation, while saving and investing with a view to long term financial equanimity.  If you lose ground to inflation for one, two or even a few years, don't panic.  Try to position your portfolio so that you can make up the "losses" later on.  Also spend less and save more.  This will increase your net worth without requiring you to dial up the risk.

The same is true of keeping pace with market averages.  The Dow Jones Industrial Average, the S&P 500, or whatever benchmark you might follow may be convenient ways to assess the performance of money managers who want to take your savings.  But market indices don't need to be your financial goals.  If your portfolio is conservatively deployed and doesn't keep pace with the S&P 500, you haven't "lost" unless you decide you're a loser.  As long as you are saving enough for retirement, your kids' college costs, and whatever other goals you might have, it doesn't matter a rat's left ear whether or not your investment returns match one market index or another.  If your portfolio is more cautiously invested than the stocks found in an index, you won't suffer the volatility of the index.  Maybe the Dow just reached a record level (although this really isn't a record once you factor in inflation).  But looking back at what happened in 2000 and 2007 after the Dow previously reached record levels will tell you that keeping up with market indices can be a losing proposition. 

Keeping pace with inflation and with market averages are, for individual investors, false idols that they need not worship.  Building your net worth isn't a contest.  It's a process.  There are lots of ways to make your retirement years golden.  Do whatever helps you sleep at night.

Keep Your Investments Simple, Because the Alternatives Could Be Worse

As reported by the New York Times (and linked through CNBC.com:  http://www.cnbc.com/id/100449551), retail investors are once again being burned by complex alternative investments.  This is an old story in the annals of investment busts.  The more complex an investment, the less likely a retail investor will understand it, and the greater the advantage an unscrupulous broker will have in foisting it on the unsuspecting.  What's troubling is that many of the victims weren't seeking a fast, speculative buck.  They were often conservative investors who were pushed by the Federal Reserve's scorched earth policy against interest rates to hunt in dark, dank thickets for elusive, ethereal positive yields.  Desperate for investment income, they fell victim to sales people saying what they wanted to hear, but maybe not what they needed to understand.

An underappreciated element of saving and investing is the need to manage risk.  Manage doesn't mean avoiding all risk, and it certainly doesn't mean seeing greater risk as the path to greater rewards.  It means understanding that risk and reward are linked, and that not getting too greedy about rewards is the way to long term success.  Some risk is reasonable, as long as you don't expose yourself to so much volatility that you grab the little paper bag in the seatback in front of you and put all your money in a mattress.  The tortoise beats the hare when it comes to investing.  Searching for quick returns is like donning wings of paraffin and flying toward the Sun.  Don't invest in anything that you don't understand--and that means having a full appreciation for every way your hmmmm can be deep fried.  Simple, steady and average are a decidedly better bet for making you comfortable in retirement than the latest in glam financial fashions.  For more, see http://blogger.uncleleosden.com/2009/11/techniques-for-retirement-saving.html.

How Government Adds Risk to Risk Assets

The Federal Reserve has been on a tear, squashing interest rates in order to coerce investors into risk assets.  But investors, especially individual investors, have been zigging where the Fed wants them to zag.  They have succumbed to post traumatic stock disorder, and abandoned equities with abandon. 

Fear of stocks isn't just a product of the market busts of recent years.  It's also driven by too many known unknowns.  The role of government in pumping up asset prices has become so great that it receives more attention from financial news services than economic fundamentals.  But, as mandated by the law of unintended consequences, government actions have made risk assets less attractive.  Here's how.

The Fed has become less predictable.  In years past, the Federal Reserve was slow to reveal its thinking and the reasons for its policy actions.  Chairman Ben Bernanke has endeavored to be more transparent.  And he has been more transparent about the workings of the Open Market Committee and its thinking.  But what has been revealed only confounds.  The Fed is quite open about its intention to provide monetary stimulus in order to boost employment.  But no one knows what level of employment will cause the Fed to ease back, or what rate of inflation will lead it to move interest rates up.  No one knows what type or form of additional quantitative easing the Fed will employ if employment levels remain unsatisfactory (however unsatisfactory may be defined).  Will it buy car loans, credit card debt, bankers acceptances, commercial paper, corporate bonds, junk bonds, common stocks, or something else?  Whether or not, why, when, how, how fast, and how much are important, but unanswered, questions concerning the Fed's potential unwinding of its massive $3 trillion plus balance sheet. Any purchaser of risk assets would want answers to these questions.  But answers are unavailable.

The Fed is relentlessly driving its monetary wagon train under the motto "full employment or bust."  By acting so vigorously and creatively, however, it has created a lot of uncertainty even as it has stabilized the financial system.  There are so many uncertainties about the route the Fed is taking that individual investors don't want to hitch up their wagons and join the trek.  What the Fed will do next is anybody's guess, and because of its outsized impact on risk asset prices, this unpredictability makes risk assets riskier.

Fiscal funk.  Congress's dysfunction was on full display last year when those freakin' idiots--excuse me, the esteemed members of Congress--almost blew up America's creditworthiness in the debt ceiling debacle.  Things haven't changed.  Forecasting fiscal policy is like peering into a black hole.  It's impenetrable.  Whatever happens could make things worse.  Also, consider the permanently temporary nature of the Bush II tax cuts, which have fallen into the habit of being extended a year at a time.  The analysis of risk assets becomes labyrinthine when the tax system is established for only a year at a time. Another big, bad black hole is known as the fiscal cliff, which is huffing and puffing furiously.  Yet we don't know if we're in a house of straw, wood or brick.  All these fiscal foulups accentuate the risk in risk assets. 

Rational investors trying to reason their way to well-founded decisions haven't got a popsicle's chance in hell of figuring out the upsides and downsides of risk assets.  They just know that these known unknowns heighten the risks.  In such circumstances, digging the fox hole deeper and hunkering down all the more make sense.

The Weird and Unknown From the U.S. Credit Rating Downgrade

We learned in a big way during the 2008 financial crisis that what we don't know can really hurt us. That would still be true today, after S&P lowered America's credit rating from AAA to AA+. We also know that weird stuff happens when the financial markets get a tummy ache. They seem likely to be queasy from the downgrade when the markets open tomorrow. The weird and unknown may surface soon.

Complex Trading. Major banks and hedge funds frequently trade esoteric investments in multi-investment positions involving U.S. Treasuries as hedges or otherwise. Quite often, these market players embrace leverage in playing this game, since it boosts potential profits. The downgrade shouldn't have come as a complete surprise, since the rating agencies have been loudly frowning at the U.S. debt situation for several months now. But the downgrade's timing was uncertain and its impact uncertain. Complex trading positions may become unhinged for unanticipated reasons. These large institutional traders may find their positions exposed, or may receive unexpected demands for collateral from brokers or counterparties, and then struggle to keep things on an even keel. If so, that could prove unsettling for the markets, especially if the exposures from such trading are directly or indirectly concentrated in one or two companies, a la AIG circa 2008. The reform of the derivatives market has proceeded slowly, if at all, and regulators likely have no idea if there exists the potential for another meltdown. So all we can do is wait and see what happens. If there is another AIG lurking out there, expect very bad consequences.

Housing Market Hassles. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac provide almost all the financing in the residential real estate markets, primarily because their debts are effectively 100% guaranteed by the U.S. government. It's logical to expect that Fannie and Freddie will be downgraded, since their sugar daddy was just downgraded. This could make mortgage loans harder to get. Not necessarily because interest rates would rise, because the U.S. Treasury downgrade could trigger a flight to safety that ironically would increase demand for U.S. Treasuries (there being few alternatives). But a Fan/Fred downgrade would make it harder to find investors for the mortgage backed securities that Fan/Fred backed loans go into. Investors in those securities are the true source of liquidity for the mortgage market, and may demand higher quality borrowers than current already stringent credit standards require. The housing market could slip on yet another banana peel in its path.

Chinese Communists Strengthened. China's Communist government has been coming under increasing domestic political pressure, because of rising unemployment, poor protection of consumers, sporadic protection of the environment, corruption and co-optation by China's capitalist plutocracy. The S&P downgrade of U.S. Treasuries, however, highlights the fundamental strength of the Chinese economy and its levitating currency, the yuan. That makes the Communist government look good, at a time when it needed some positive spin. Of course, S&P wasn't trying to influence internal Chinese politics. But the law of unintended consequences is the supreme authority in the world of finance.

Obama-Boehner in 2012? Increased factionalism in both political parties is stretching current party delineations close to the breaking point. The Republican Party is held hostage by a limited number of Tea Party ideologues. Respected mainstream conservative voices have labeled Tea Partiers "hobbits, " which, albeit an affront to hobbits, captures the fantastical quality of the thinking on the far right. At the same time, the fissure between President Obama and liberal Democrats has been outed. Emotions are red hot. Ralph Nader publicly, and likely others nonpublicly, predict a primaries challenge to President Obama next year. No one is naming names yet. The most obvious challenger, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, has publicly said she isn't running for elective office again. Neither a liberal left agenda, nor a Tea Party-style conservative platform, will win the White House in 2012. Both Obama and Boehner know that. Their problems with their parties will increase, because the debt ceiling deal creates a bipartisan committee to squabble more about deficit reduction, giving all factions many opportunities for further raucousness. With so many shouting past each other instead of having a dialogue, the conditions for a realignment of parties are ripening. It's impossible that Obama and Boehner would actually team up to run in 2012. But the pressures for a functioning U.S. government come from powerful forces in the financial markets and the economy. We're no longer debating political philosophy or ideology over beer and pretzels or coffee and Danish. Lots of jobs, careers, wealth, and retirements are on the line. The will of the people is for a functioning government, and ambitious politicians will find a way to give them one. Current party alignments may be endangered.

Batten Down the Hatches for the Dog Days

This could be a stormy summer. Like the mortgage debt crisis three years ago that blew up and froze the financial markets, there's a nontrivial chance the government debt crisis could do the same this summer. Government debt, normally the investment of last resort, is starting to look hinky. With respect to the federal debt ceiling, some Republicans in Congress seem intent on provoking a default in August. Biting the hands that feed us--i.e., stiffing investors in U.S. Treasury securities--hardly seems like a good idea for a debtor nation. But "smart politician" is virtually an oxymoron these days.

More than America, the Euro bloc lurches inexorably toward default. For the moment, Greece is the only nation that is likely to formally default. However, all Euro bloc members have pretty much assumed de facto responsibility for all the sovereign debt and bank debt of all member nations. So a default by Greece is, in effect, a default by the entire Euro bloc. Such a development would not be well-received in the financial markets. But Euro bloc leaders are divided about what to do, and progress toward true resolution is seen about as often as the ivory-billed woodpecker.

Although another financial crisis is a low probability event, the simultaneous dysfunction in Washington and Europe could make things go haywire in the dog days of this summer. After all, nothing has been done since the last credit crunch that would preclude another one this year. What to do?

Love cash. Have a cash lovefest. Build up your emergency fund and put it in a bank (making sure it's 100% covered by FDIC insurance). Avoid non-essential big purchases for the next few months to increase cash on hand.

Be cautious with money market funds. If U.S. Treasury securities actually default, money market funds might have to break the buck. A sudden spike in interest rates could reduce the value of their T-bills and impose losses on the funds. Although the extent of such losses is likely to be comparatively small, given the very short maturities that money market funds are supposed to hold, it's not impossible that a freeze-up in the Treasury securities market could result in money market losses and perhaps momentarily limit access to your account. This is a low probability event, and fund management companies would probably go to great lengths to avoid breaking the buck. But it happened once in 2008. If you are likely to need funds in a money market account in the near future, consider moving the necessary amount into a federally insured bank account in July if the debt ceiling mess remains unresolved.

Invest defensively. Now's not the best time to take a flier, except if you have mad money you can easily afford to lose. Note how the Nasdaq market has, in recent days, been falling proportionately faster than the Dow and the S&P 500. Many risk assets are falling, literally, out of favor. Be careful about diving into emerging markets. China's economy is slowing, and India's and Brazil's governmental yield curves are inverting (seen by some as a sign of impending recession).

Avoid unnecessary financial commitments. If you're thinking of making a major financial commitment, like buying an annuity or a whole life insurance policy, consider stepping back and waiting to see how things play out over the next few months. If, for example, you buy an annuity now, and Treasury yields rise sharply later this year because of a U.S. government default, you may effectively have lost money because you would have bought at today's low interest rates.

Line up credit lines now. Credit could evaporate if things go gonzo. While borrowing is to be avoided if at all possible during a financial crisis, there sometimes are pressing reasons to go into hock. Line up any loans you'll need. Since it's even possible a bank might terminate the unused portion of a line of credit if the sky falls, you may want to draw down on credit lines now if you are absolutely sure you'll need the money and have no other way to get it. Make damn sure you can repay what you draw down. And keep the loan funds in a bank account, not a money market fund.

All this may sound on par with suggestions to stock freeze dried food and bottled water, and to start a garden in your back yard. But we haven't had to rely on subsistence farming in more than a century. Just three years ago, credit was crunched and the financial system almost failed. As far as money goes, take nothing for granted.

Why the Tortoise Ends Up Wealthier Than the Hare

Remember how the slow, steady, plodding tortoise of legend beat the swift but all too confident hare? When it comes to investment savings, the tortoise is also the winner. Here's why.

Research has shown that investors tend to chase returns. (See http://www.investopedia.com/articles/05/032905.asp.) When a market is hot and prices are skyrocketing, people tend to jump in. Often, they enter the market as prices are peaking, and then begin to take losses when the market falters. This happened to many investors in the late 1990's with high tech stocks, and more recently to many buyers in the real estate markets (many of whom exacerbated their problems with high risk loans).

Then, the same investors that plunged into the market when it was rising tended to sell when it declined. They were therefore not invested when the market began to recover, and missed out on the gains that the recovery offered.

The end result is that many investors buy high and sell low. This isn't a way to make money.

What leads people to chase returns like this? From a psychological standpoint, it's unclear. But the financial phenomenon that triggers buying high and selling low is market volatility. That is to say, the tendency of a market or investment to rise or fall rapidly. The faster the market or investment rises, the more it lures people in. The harder it falls, the more likely they will flee. But they aren't making a lot of money this way.

How does an ordinary investor combat the tendency to chase returns? By seeking out more stable investments. The less your investments create false hopes or major gastronomic distress, the more likely you are to stay with them and capture long term gains. You shouldn't embrace risk--too much of it is likely to lead y0u to buy high and sell low. Instead, you should take conservative, calculated risks--enough to have the potential for long term gains from stocks, but with some stable assets like bonds, bank or credit union certificates of deposit, or money market funds to keep you from abruptly exiting the financial markets and putting the money in a mattress.

One of the easiest ways to get a good mix of stability and the potential for long term gains is to invest in lifecycle or target date funds. We discussed them recently in our blog, "Investing Made Simple" (blogger.uncleleosden.com/2007/05/investing-made-simple.html).

Perhaps it's counterintuitive to invest in a way that limits your potential for big investment gains. But recognize that we're all human, invest in a way that saves us from ourselves, and you may end up winning the tortoise's victory over the hare.

Retirement News: If you thought you could fund your retirement with lottery tickets, think again. See http://www.nbc4.com/money/13345064/detail.html.