Frank Sinatra Has Some Sage Advice for Your Investment Portfolio

(00:01.08)

Frank Sinatra and your portfolio. Yes, I am a Frank Sinatra fan. And I have to say, I was put on the spot, I think my favorite song by Frank Sinatra is, it was a very good year. Why? I don’t know. I can’t think of another song, quite frankly, where you listen to it and you close your eyes and you’re there.

I mean, it’s, nothing like it. I mean, he takes you, you know, the background music, the way it is, he takes you to those points in time. Read a little bit from it. You know, when I was 17, it was a very good year. It was a very good year for small town girls and soft summer nights. We’d hide from the lights on the village green when I was 17. And if you’re not familiar with the song,

listen to it for crying out loud kids, close your eyes and listen to it. And it goes through different points of his life, 21, 35, all great years. Even when, again, he talks about when he’s older in the autumn of the year, thinks of his life as a vintage wine from fine old kegs. Well, what does this have to do with your portfolio and your money? Well.

We all have very good years. We all have very good years when it comes to the performance in our portfolio, if you have any sort of competent advisors. With that being said, there are other years and points in time where things come up where, you know what, things are not

so good. And Frank doesn’t really sing about that in any of his songs. How to tell what’s going to be a very good year and a not so very good year. It was a great, I was just reminded of this quite frankly, the was a guy by the name of George Goodman. And he wrote under the pen name, Adam Smith.

(02:28.166)

I gotta thank Jason’s wife from the Wall Street Journal for putting this out. And he put this information, he had a book in 1972 called Super Money. And again, he basically, he writes a little tale about almost similar to like the Frank Sinatra song, having a great time at a party and champagne glasses are full and everyone is laughing at a good time.

But you know, when is the right time to leave the party? And everyone is looking around, know, what time is it? When should we go? And he mentions that you look at the clock and the clock has no hands. Well, this goes along with what we talk about about trying to time markets and the futility of all that. With that,

being said, okay? I don’t know, because again, I’m getting questioned all the time what to expect out of the markets during the Trump years. Listen, I don’t know what’s around the corner. of those Donald Trump things were going swimmingly during his first run at it. And then, you know, the COVID crazies came in and wrecked it.

What you need to do is to make sure, make sure that again, you rotate assets in your portfolio. You protect your downside by doing that. You have that barbell strategy that we’ve talked about that makes sense for the long run. You can have very, very good years, very good year. When the market’s going like gangbusters and the party’s on,

you can have a great year. You know, the issue is when people get a little bit too nuts. It’s kind of like if you go to a party and you drink too much, then the party doesn’t turn out so good in the end, does it not? Again, what one needs to do, okay, again, is to make sure, make sure.

(04:49.186)

that you’re rotating assets in your portfolio, you trim positions along the way and you’re protected for whatever, you know, whatever your risk tolerance is at that point in time. Again, I don’t know. I don’t know. I said, that’s kind of interesting. I almost should put a clock in my office with no hands on it. Here I am trying to time the market because it doesn’t work.

Be smart, be prudent, and again, you will have plenty of very good years. Watchdog on wallstreet.com.