Be careful..

Be careful. This video is going to be a little bit more heartfelt, a little more where I'm just talking to you straight, because in all of my years of finance, this year's starting to look eerily similar to some of those bad, bad years that we had in the stock market. And it's not necessarily about a bad year in the market, but more so about what I'm seeing in the industry overall and how so many people are being taken advantage of or losing money unnecessarily. And so let me help you. With the stock market falling and with fear spreading everywhere, investors are about to make some very expensive mistakes. Now in videos like these, it's good to hear warnings and what to watch out for, but also what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go the extra mile and actually show you how to prepare and what to do to make sure that you're a very successful investor. Times like these aren't necessarily fun and definitely not easy, but it can be where you separate yourself from the rest of the pack. I've been investing personally for over 20 years and I've helped thousands of people with their investments. I know that these are the moments that separate investors from getting that long-term wealth building from those that are going to sabotage their own portfolios. So today I want to share six things every investor needs to remember before making their next move. My name is Nolan Govea, my students call me Professor G, And I made this channel to make investing simplified. Remember that all investing carries risks, so do your own research. This is not financial advice, and I'm not a financial advisor. The biggest danger during a stock market decline isn't necessarily the market itself. It's how investors react to it. Building wealth isn't about predicting the next crash, but having the discipline to survive it and benefit from long-term compounding. So number one, be careful who you're listening to. When stocks start to fall, suddenly everybody becomes this expert on when the next crash is going to happen and how much it's going to crash. Remember, fear generates clicks, but it doesn't necessarily generate wealth. The people screaming the loudest about the market are rarely the ones helping you build a successful 20-year investment strategy. My goal here on this channel is to help you to build a portfolio that not only could withstand any bad market, but also lets you thrive in a very good market. If you hear and know the facts that you cannot time the market, but then the person you keep listening to keeps telling you to switch your holdings based on temporary events, this is a conflict and this is not smart. I've worked with multi, multi-millionaires, and I can tell you without a doubt that the common theme is that they didn't mess with their portfolio. They did the research, they set their portfolio, they usually automated in some way, shape, or form, and then they just let the market do its thing. So be careful who you're listening to. Sometimes people give me some feedback and they say, hey, sometimes on your videos it sounds like you're saying the same thing every once in a while. Well, I think that's a good thing. If I'm sticking to what I've said in the bad market, in the good market, in the sideways market, that means that consistency is something that I'm practicing what I preach. In much of life, consistency is the key. Moving on to number two. Don't confuse temporary losses with permanent mistakes. A portfolio dropping 10%, 15%, or even 20% doesn't automatically mean that your investing strategy is broken. Market corrections and bear markets are a normal part of investing, and historically, diversified stock investors who stayed invested over long periods have often been rewarded. The real danger is turning temporary fear, temporary emotions into a permanent loss by panic selling and getting out of the market. Like I said from before, I've worked with thousands of investors and the ones who have made the most money have stayed in the market. The ones who have the biggest regrets are the ones who took money out because something big was happening. There was some fear and it was justified. There was real fear. Something bad was happening, whether it be COVID, a new president, some type of shock or war. Those are real things. But if you look back in the data and you look back at the stock market every single year, there's some reason to get out of the stock market. But if you look at the S&P 500 chart, it just would have been a very smart move to stay invested because it's very much up and to the right with some small dips here and there. Now I am an actual university professor and so every semester I show my university students this graphic many times. Look at the navy blue versus the orange. Blue is when the market's up and orange is when it's down or in a bear market. Visually, it's quite simple. It's way more blue than orange. The stock market's up way more than it's down. Stay the course. For those of you in retirement, have a robust emergency fund of three years worth of expenses to cover that short orange period, but overall stay the course. Number three, the stock market transfers wealth from the impatient to the patient. One of the biggest mistakes in investing that I see, and I see this every single month, is that people either buy when everyone else is excited and when the market's up, or they're selling when the market's dropping. Think about the investors who sold during 2008, March 2020, or the 2022 bear market and never got back in. The goal isn't to avoid volatility. It's to avoid letting volatility control your decisions. One of the wisest investors ever, one of the best investors ever, Warren Buffett, says this. No called strikes in the business. The pitcher just stands there and throws balls at you. And if you're playing real baseball and it's between the knees and the shoulders, you either swing or you get a strike called on. If you get too many called on, you're out. In the securities business. You sit there, and they throw U.S. Steel at 25, and they throw General Motors at 68, and you don't have to swing at any of them. They may be wonderful pitches to swing at, but if you don't know enough, you don't have to swing. And you can sit there and watch thousands of pitches and finally you get one right there where you want it. Something that you understand. You don't have to swing. Understand what you're investing in. Be patient and understand what you're about to invest in or what you're already invested in. This is some of the simplest advice that will actually impact your financial life Bye forever. Number four, lower prices can actually work to your advantage. Why is it that everywhere else, other than the stock market, if we see something that we like that's a lower price, we say, ooh, that's a good thing. But then in the stock market, we see a company that we've either bought into before or we're thinking about buying and have researched, but then it goes down, lower price, and we say, oh, I'll just wait. I'll wait on that. I actually don't like it now that it's cheaper. This doesn't make sense. If you're investing for another 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, why would you want this stock to be more expensive for you to then buy into? When broad market ETFs like VOO or VTI or QQQM decline, your regular contributions can purchase more shares for the same amount of money. For long-term accumulators, market declines can be opportunities rather than disasters, provided your financial situation and investment thesis haven't changed. Like look at this, for the past three years, I've been telling people to keep a balanced portfolio, make sure to do the entire three fund portfolio that I always talk about, and specifically add to SCHD. But if you look at SCHD from 2023 to 2026, it was quite flat, so nobody listened. Well now this year, SCHD is up over 30%, while the other big indexes like the S&P 500 and NASDAQ 100 are way, way behind. My 3-fund portfolio did amazing over the past three years when everything was up big, but then even this year, while most portfolios are yielding around 10-12% or less, mine's up almost 20% because of SCHD and Berkshire Hathaway primarily, and I've been buying those for years especially when they were down, not up. You don't get rich in investing by buying things when they're You get rich in investing when you buy, when things are down or even sideways, when everybody else is following the pack on other stocks and other investments that are already too high and you stick to your research and you stick to your guns and you buy when nobody else is buying. But don't confuse that with this next one which is number five and be careful about about trying to time the exact bottom. While yes, buying low is the goal. It's also not something that you can do accurately and probably will mess with your investing and hurt your long-term wealth. Most of my clients ask me this question that I'm sure you've thought yourself. They say, Professor G, wouldn't it just be the best idea to buy when the stock actually drops another 10%? Right now it's like kind of up near its high or this ETF is up a bit. I'm just going to wait till it drops, then I'll buy at that point, then it'll come back up and I'll just make a whole bunch of money. And usually what I respond back to them is you're 100% correct. That is exactly how you would make the most amount of money possible. Buying at its lowest and letting it come up. The only problem with that is how do you know that it's at its lowest? How will you know when it will be at its lowest? Nobody on earth knows when that's going to happen or even if that's going to happen. I've seen it so, so many times with my clients and my financial circle, even with my colleagues, where they think they can outsmart the market because of some economical situation that might happen in the next year or two years. And what actually happens is they may be right. There might be a drop at that point. But what happens up until that point is the stock market steadily increases, 15, 20%. Then that thing does happen they were talking about and it drops 10%. But had they bought here before the run-up, they actually would have got in at a better price or even better, just dollar cost average throughout the entire thing, whether it's up, whether it's down, if it's a good index and it's a good thing that you've been researching. Everyone wants to sell before the crash and buy back at the exact bottom, but successfully timing both decisions consistently is incredibly difficult. Some of the market's strongest recovery days happen during periods of extreme uncertainty, and missing them can seriously damage long-term returns. And that's the other piece of this. A lot of people will say, well, I'm going to sell now because it does look like a crash is happening. And maybe you can see that. Maybe you see the oil prices are very high, or we just declared that we're going to war. Yeah the stock market's probably going to drop. The problem is how long do we know how far down it's going to go and for how long? You start to see a little bit of a recovery and you think it's probably not a real recovery, it's probably going to keep dropping. Then it keeps coming back up and then you have to buy in possibly when it's higher than what you even sold at. So successfully timing it both ways is the whole reason why most people can't do this right. That's why I just say dollar cost average for the vast majority of you, and long term just let the market do its thing. Number six is where everything comes together. Your portfolio should give you peace, not panic. If a 10% market decline or possible market decline down the road is causing you to lose sleep, you're probably too risky as it is. Your portfolio is probably too volatile for what it is that you need in this season of life. Having an emergency fund, appropriate diversification, and an allocation that matches your time horizon can help you avoid selling investments when you need them most. The best investment strategy isn't the one that makes the most money in a perfect market, it's the one you can actually stick with when things get ugly. Now the stock market, and specifically the S&P 500, or just total US stock market index, Has survived recessions, wars, inflation, financial crises, and countless predictions of its collapse. That doesn't mean that every investment recovers or that the next decade is going to be easy or even successful. But if you own diversified investments and you have a long-term investing schedule and you continue investing consistently and just stay consistent in all areas, you don't need to be able to predict tomorrow or next year to be able to build wealth for the next 20 years. And even those of you that are in retirement, your investing didn't just stop because you retired. You still have a trajectory. You still have a period of time. It's just that we need to be a bit more safe with at least a portion of it so that you can live off of that in the event of a drop. Be careful not to let short-term fear dictate your long-term future. Take some time today to watch this video where I go over the simple three-fund portfolio that I was talking about from earlier in this video. And exact percentages of those allocations based off of your age or life stage. Or watch this one to keep you going strong in investing. Keep investing simplified.