On this episode of The Retirement Huddle podcast, Mark Howard explains how to handle market volatility and what not to do during these tumultuous times.

Over-trading

Over-trading is trying to outsmart the market by constantly moving money around from one investment to another.

If you’re doing that, you really need to wake up and face some cold, hard truths. Change is immediately required. Some clients come to us and ask for help with this. Sometimes you need to let someone else take this over.

It’s very difficult to time the market. You need to be right twice. You need to buy right and sell right.

Panic

Some people constantly worry that market losses are going to lead to financial ruin. The last time I saw panic was after Thanksgiving this year when markets dropped 700-800 points.

The most important thing we can do for people is to give them confidence, clarity, and comfort so they don’t have to worry about ups and downs in the market.

Head in the sand

Some people try to ignore everything because it’s too stressful. We saw this in 2008, and a lot of people said they couldn’t look at how they were doing financially. You don’t want to put your head in the sand. You need to have a strategy, and we can help you with that.

Extreme confidence

A lot of people out there are overconfident. The sequence of returns tells us that the market may not always go up in the long run. If the market corrects at the wrong, the five years before you retire, you might not make your losses up.

Marketing Timing

Timing the market is really hard and can cause a headache. If you have concerns about market volatility, we are confident we can help put you in a better financial position.

Listen to the full episode or use the timestamps to jump to a specific section. Thanks for listening! We’ll be back for another show every other Thursday.

Today’s Rundown:

[1:08] – Social Security

[5:44] – Too much risk

[8:06] – Too much cash

[10:24] – No idea about investments

[11:59] – Leaving an advisor