Stock Advisor returns as of 6/15/21
Jason Hall: What I want to do guys is for us to share our own rules, each of us maybe just a rule that you think every individual investor should follow almost without exception. Travis, you got one for us?
Travis Hoium: Yeah. One of the things that I have gotten better at over the years but I think is always a good idea, is to just not check your portfolio on a regular basis. We’re the people who are in the stock market every day, we’re looking at what’s happening with companies trying to analyze them on a fundamental level. But at the end of the day, for me as an investor, it doesn’t matter if the stock is going to go up two percent, or three percent, or five percent, or down, for that matter, in any given day or week, or even year. I’ve learned this over the years that the times when I forget about my portfolio, if you will, and just don’t log in for a month or two, that’s when I really do the best as an investor. That’s something that I’m both trying to institute for myself but I think is a really good idea for most investors, is just don’t check on your portfolio too often.
Jason Hall: Taylor? You’re muted, boss. There he is.
Taylor Carmichael: [laughs] Thank you. I’m a rule-breaker at heart, so that was a tough question for me. I’m like, “Rules, rules.” One rule I like that’s a good rule and I always do it, is I put all of my stocks in Motley Fool CAPS. If you don’t know what Motley Fool CAPS is, this is a free service we provide where you put your stocks in and it measures it versus the S&P 500, which is basically the market. I’m a big fan of doing that. It’s just keeping my ego in check and knowing not just that my stocks are positive, but are they actually beating the market, and that’s a really good thing to do. After you’ve done it for several years, and it gives you a sense of how good of an investor you are, whether you should be in an index funds, whether you should continue being an individual investor buying stocks. I would strongly suggest putting all your stocks in CAPS. We’ve had 60,000 Fools in CAPS already, and it’s super helpful to me, and to piggyback on what Travis said. When I first started playing CAPS, and it’s been around since 2007, I first started playing it, I was actively trading, I was playing it like a game and I wanted to win, and I was trading. I got frustrated because I couldn’t go up, I couldn’t move, and I quit playing, and I didn’t look at it for years, years went by, like four years, but I hadn’t eliminated anything, I came back and I looked at it and I was in the top two or three percent. That just goes to show you, do your research, make your calls, but give them time. You’ve got to give your stocks time to grow and let the miracle of compound interest work. That’s a secret to playing CAPS, is don’t play it like you’re playing football, man. You got to be like a Zen Buddhist and let it sit there for a while, just like your stocks, let them sit, let them develop, and you’ll get to a point where your money makes money for you.
