Last update: 17.09.2024 08:34
Sandra is irritated. Yesterday everyone was saying that Facebook was deadly safe and today she hears and reads that the share price has plummeted by over 20 %. And she’s supposed to invest in shares? Pure casino! We take Sandra by the hand and show her which tips she can use to invest in shares with confidence despite the Facebook crash.
Sandra is 31 and doesn’t know much about the financial market. She knows that she doesn’t earn much interest on her account and that there is more to be gained on the stock market. Sandra is single and enjoys her life in her limited free time. After all, her job in the medical department of a hospital is stressful enough. She doesn’t need another excitement like a plummeting Facebook share! But somehow she wants to do more with her hard-earned money than just let it sit in her bank account. But how to start?
We take a look with Sandra at how it works. We draw on the insights of Jack Bogle, who founded Vanguard in 1975. Bogle can look back on over 60 years of investment experience. His rules have been tested in various market phases and have proven their worth. Incidentally, Vanguard is the world’s largest bond fund and the second largest asset manager. The company’s success is based on the sale of passive index funds to investors, which are offered at a lower price than actively managed funds. Vanguard is not listed on the stock exchange, but is owned by the Vanguard funds and ETFs, which in turn are owned by the investors who invest in these funds. This results in a cooperative-like ownership structure. Now to Jack’s rules:
1. invest, don’t save
If Sandra wants to achieve a higher return than her bank account, she has to invest and not just save. More return means more risk, as she uses her money entrepreneurially as a shareholder. However, market fluctuations are not the biggest risk for Sandra’s finances – the markets have always risen over longer periods of time. The much greater risk is that Sandra doesn’t invest at all and watches her money lose value.
2. let time play for you. Now is good
The compound interest effect ensures that even small amounts can grow into a small fortune over time. Don’t be fooled by scaremongers or self-proclaimed experts who advise you to wait for the right time to invest – now is good! Any time is good, as long as it is an investment for a longer investment horizon. We know that the stock markets have had a positive annual performance in the past – almost 7 % for the MSCI World on average. You don’t know in advance which year it will go up and which year it will go down. And since we know that we don’t know in advance, the most sensible alternative is to stay invested for as long as possible. The best thing for Sandra to do is to regularly invest a fixed amount in the stock market every month – and only money that she can do without for ten years.
3. stay cool and listen away
The stock market goes up and down – that’s the way it is. So? Don’t let it catch you or make you nervous. Warren Buffett, the self-made billionaire through share investments, puts it in a nutshell: “Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful”. With realistic return expectations, you can build your wealth in the long term and without emotions, without being disturbed by the background noise of the financial industry. Got / read / heard a great stock tip? Thanks, no. Save yourself the trouble of reading financial pornography, because the world is full of tips for equity investors and the financial media live on it. Unfortunately, it’s true that not even financial professionals manage to pick the best stocks in the long term – which is why the return on actively managed funds is lower than the return achievable on the market over longer periods of time. If you think you’re better, you’re lying to yourself.
4. be stingy with the costs
We have already worked out with Reto how much a small difference in costs can make to his assets. With the passive product, Reto’s investment horizon is almost twice as long as with the active product. Every little helps a lot! Money costs money. That’s why it’s important that you pay attention to low costs: when buying, managing and storing your portfolio. You can save with low-cost ETFs and low-cost online brokers. You don’t need a fund manager, a bank or a hyped robo-advisor. Just take your investment into your own hands. Here’s how.
5. bet on the mix
Investing is like mixing cocktails. What your cocktail needs is time to fully develop, it must have the right mix of ingredients and it must taste good. To do this, take a mixture of the asset classes shares, bonds and savings accounts. If necessary, add real estate. Depending on whether you prefer racy cocktails that can knock you out quickly or gentle, non-alcoholic ones. For bonds, go for boring, first-class issuers (e.g. government bonds or government-related issuers). Your choice of ingredients explains over 90% of the portfolio return – not whether you get in or out at the right time (known as market timing) or pick the right stocks (known as stock picking). The balance of ingredients in your mixed cocktail also ensures that your cocktail doesn’t go down too hard when stocks swing south.
6. buy markets instead of shares
Do you remember Swissair? The company is bankrupt, the shares are worthless. Nokia? Used to be the global market leader for cell phones. Tempi passati, now the shares are cheap. In capital market theory, value fluctuation risk is divided into systematic and unsystematic risk. There is nothing you can do about the company-specific (so-called unsystematic) risk. If you have Facebook shares and they crash, you’re in. Too bad. But you can eliminate the systematic risk through diversification. That’s why it’s better to stay away from individual shares and invest in passive index funds or ETFs that cover entire markets such as the SMI, Eurostoxx or S&P500. This is how it works: Invest in shares with a few ETFs.
7. gring ache u seckle – you have to go through with it
“Buy shares, take sleeping pills and stop looking at the papers. After many years you will see: You are rich.” This bon mot from André Kostolany, an outstanding stock market expert and journalist, shows how important it is to adopt a long-term investment horizon and stick with it. This is often described as a “buy & hold” strategy: Buy and hold shares: “Time instead of timing”. Kim’s missiles, Trump’s punitive tariffs, Erdogan’s currency problems, Greece’s debt problem, Italy’s how many new elections? It doesn’t matter. The comparatively high return on equity investments is due to relatively few days with high price increases. If you are not invested then, you lose considerable returns. For example, the 15 best trading days since the introduction of the German share index in 1987 accounted for almost half of its total return. Most of the best trading days were in stormy times. This also applies to the Swiss stock market: if you were only uninvested for the 10 best days in the period from 1990 to 2015 (around 6,000 days), your average equity return would fall by 3 percentage points from 6.7 % to 3.7 %. So buy an equity index (and not individual stocks), leave it and don’t sell, especially in bad times. Because the best days are often close to the worst. So hang in there.
8. bringing the sheep to dry land
Only cash is king – book profits are pleasing, but they are only real when you realize them. That’s why you need to think about when you’ll need your money. Because the equity portion of your cocktail can become bitter. That’s why it’s best to start gradually shifting your equity ETFs into less volatile investments (first-class bonds, savings accounts) a few years in advance. Or metaphorically speaking: dilute the cocktail with water.
Mach den ersten Schritt zur finanziellen Unabhängigkeit
In einer Minute siehst du deine Vermögensentwicklung und dein Einkommen während der Rente.
