What Gets Attention is Rarely Valuable

by Michael Antonelli, Market Strategist, Baird

“Stocks sold off today as worries about global growth and Fed inaction drove investors to flee the US market”

Is that a headline from August 2024?  Nope, it’s from August 2015.  Back then, broad-based indices fell 10% as investors grappled with economic news and uncertainty.

My friend Ross Mayfield wrote about the latest market selloff here, so if you want to dig into the reason for this one click that link.  I’m here to talk about chaos and how it’s always been a part of your investing journey.

My friend Ashby Daniels created that image and it perfectly encapsulates the World we occupy.

Chaos heaped upon chaos.  After all, history is just a catalog of surprising events.

There are all sorts of reasons for a stock market to selloff.  It can be market plumbing, a terrorist attack, missed earnings, worries about an election, or even just no reason at all!

Daily headlines (or market earthquakes) capture a ton of our attention, but often what gets our attention can have very little value at all.  Do you care about headlines (or your worries) from 2011?  2015?  2018?  All of those were years when the stock market struggled, and the World seemed scary.  But eventually we moved past those worries and now you barely remember them at all. It’s always been chaos and yet here we are.

I truly believe that your most valuable resource isn’t time or money but your attention.  Who are you giving it to and why?  Are you spending it worrying about the yen carry trade or are you channeling it into purpose and planning and love?

August 2024 has been a volatile moment in stock market history, just like March 2020, Fall of 2018, Fall of 2015, Fall of 2011, Fall of 2008, Fall of 2001….

It’s always been chaos and yet you’ve managed to grow and compound your wealth through all of it.

One of the best things you can do right now is pick up the phone and talk to your advisor.  Why?  So they can put things in perspective for you, help assuage your concerns, and remind you why you hired them in the first place.  Spend your attention with them, not the TV.