Personal Financial Planning: A Minimalist Perspective

I’m back at looking at the stock markets and individual stocks. I cannot escape finding companies that have P/E ratios in the 30s, which are relatively slow-growth and arguably have limited prospects. In many cases, these stocks are promoted by billionaire investors who are attempting to inflate their stock prices. This used to be illegal, but now it’s an everyday occurrence.

“Valero (VLO): Michael Burry, of “Big Short” fame, revealed this week that he’s owned Valero since 2020. He argues that Gulf Coast refineries are “purpose-built for Venezuelan heavy crude” and would eventually “produce better margins across jet fuel, asphalt, and diesel.”

Valero operates 15 refineries that can process 3.2 million barrels per day of the heavy, sour crude Venezuela produces.”

I guess his ownership of Valero was kept quiet until now. I don’t know about you, but this stinks.

It’s already January 5th. We are now already into the New Year, but we only have one trading day behind us. I continue to search for suitable investment candidates that meet my stringent but undocumented investment requirements. Over the years of investing, I have failed to establish a clear and concise investment plan. This resulted in my investment decisions being somewhat random.

Eliminating greed and second-guessing from investment decisions requires a structured, disciplined approach that focuses on a long-term plan rather than short-term emotional reactions. By understanding the inherent psychological biases, you can create systems to mitigate their impact.

One issue that pops up all the time is my ability to manage my emotions. Much has been written on the topic, but little has found its way to print.

Strategies to Manage Emotions
• Develop a Written Investment Plan: Before investing, outline your specific financial goals, risk tolerance, and time horizon. This serves as an anchor during volatile periods. When emotions run high, refer back to this objective document to ensure your actions remain aligned with your long-term strategy.
• Focus on the Long Term: Acknowledge that short-term market fluctuations are inevitable. A long-term perspective helps you avoid impulsive reactions to daily news cycles, which are often designed to evoke fear or greed.
• Diversify Your Portfolio: Spread your investments across various asset classes and sectors to manage risk. Diversification can cushion the impact of market downturns and reduce the intensity of fear or the desire to chase a single “hot” stock out of greed.
• Use a Rules-Based System (e.g., Rebalancing): Regularly review and rebalance your portfolio to maintain your target asset allocation. This provides a structured, automated way to make adjustments without emotional input, such as selling assets that have performed very well (curbing greed) and buying those that are underperforming (countering fear).
• Implement Stop-Loss Orders/Position Limits: For those who struggle with selling losers, using pre-defined stop-loss points can help convert temporary losses into smaller, permanent losses, protecting capital and removing the agonizing decision-making process in the moment.
• Practice “Average In, Average Out”: Instead of trying to perfectly time the market, invest a fixed portion of your intended position at set intervals (dollar-cost averaging). This removes the pressure of “second-guessing” the exact right moment to buy or sell.
• Limit Exposure to Market Noise: Turn off financial news and avoid social media groups that promote sensationalized or biased content. Constant exposure to market commentary can heighten emotions and lead to irrational decision-making.
• Maintain an Investment Journal: Document your trades and, importantly, your feelings at the time of each trade. Reviewing this journal later can expose emotional patterns that need adjustment, building self-awareness.
• Seek Professional Advice: An experienced, objective financial advisor can provide valuable guidance, help you stay on track with your plan, and offer an unemotional perspective during times of market volatility.

These are rules that are fairly easy to set out, and not so easy to implement. One part of this that I would find particularly useful is in the Investment Journal. This would document trades. I have no idea which are my losers and winners, as my online platform provides little in the way of detail (historical) on trades. Yes, use paper, not a spreadsheet. Spreadsheets are, but paper is better.

I have been looking at an area called quantum computing. Something that I know nothing about, which has caught my eye. The company is called IonQ. IonQ Inc. is an American quantum computing hardware and software company headquartered in College Park, Maryland. The company develops general-purpose trapped ion quantum computers and accompanying software to generate, optimize, and execute quantum circuits.

The company sports a market cap of $16 billion. Amazing for an unproven technology and an unproven company. You can read a lot about it if you search with your favourite search engine. It will definitely show up. Unfortunately, nowadays, everywhere you go, they try to get you to sign up or pay to see their musings on this, that or the other stock. So much for the old theory of the internet being the “common man’s”. Sucks.

Basically, the “tech” writers tell you that it’s unproven technology and that it has a long way to go before it may become financially viable, so buying the stock is purely speculative. But many of them have had enormous gains over the past twelve months. The financial literature is riddled with them.

There seems to be a lot of speculative capital floating around. And it’s easy to get sucked into the game. Wherever you look, you’ll feel like you missed the boat unless you get into it. I must admit that I’m tempted to take a flyer.

But this must be with money I’m prepared to lose, as it’s likely I will lose. Not sure how to resolve the pull of tech, it’s a bright shiny toy. But a fool and their money are still easily parted. Not much changes, and we will see how this works out as time goes by.