Investing in a “Pea Soup Fog”: How to Stay Calm When Markets Get Unclear

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investing in P sup fog. Talk about my watchdog on Wall Street personal CFO program and we talk about navigating. Okay, nautical language, you’re navigating all sorts of market corrections, whatever it may be. How do you how does one? How does one navigate when you can’t see a damn thing and you’re in your P sup fog? I mean, people never you know, been on the

water when you can’t see a damn thing or you might be in a whiteout trying to drive or whatever it may be. You know, the phrase very carefully comes to mind and yeah, you have to be very careful. I had a great question. Great question. Every day I do, I’m a set crew, four days a week, I do a television show in San Francisco, California, local television affiliate there.

and the producer of the program was was asking me, I don’t know how you do it. I do do all this, you know, with with all the craziness going on. I can’t make heads or tails all the stuff that’s going on. I don’t know how you do it. Um, you keep one’s head.

I talk about following the fundamentals you keep one’s head, but when you you don’t when you don’t have facts present based upon what’s going on, you don’t go ahead and start leaping in certain directions. Let me give you an example. know, just over the past 24 hours, stories talking about how the oil supply crunch is spreading from the Gulf.

to the rest of the world. Stories out of Philippines were there in deep trouble. We already talked about Sri Lanka, Slovakia having cutbacks there rationing and it’s just it’s filtering through everywhere. California $7 diesel right now. Story 15 point plan to end the war. And, you know, Trump was discussing this

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And he wasn’t sure what the 15 points were. The first three points were no nuclear weapons. We’ll see. I find it hard to believe that our requests are going to be granted. I find it hard to believe that a country is going to give up basically their entire military and missile program altogether and say, we’re not going to we’re to leave ourselves open to attack. I don’t see it happening.

I don’t know what’s gonna happen because again, you’ve got the.

Trump saying yesterday that I don’t know who’s telling me the truth. And the unfortunate thing is, is that you basically are being told, depending upon what team you’re on, you’re on the elephant, donkey or red hat, whatever it may be, how you’re supposed to feel. You got to put your faith in it. You know, I got to let the president let him cook, saying that the Saudis are encouraging us to do a lot more in Iran. And then the Saudis come out and say, no, we’re not.

We’re being told that yes, negotiations are taking place in Pakistan and Turkey are involved in the negotiations and the Iranians and saying no, we’re not. Story in regards to the new parliament, the parliament speaker, this Mohammed Bagher, Galiboff emerging as the the new leader of Iran and he’s he’s a hardliner.

They say, he’s a hardliner, but he is also pragmatic. I don’t know.

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I don’t know and anybody out there that tells you they know Is quite frankly is not being honest with you you can get a myriad of people on TV various different pundits Okay, what is it was it that the Mark Twain line that I told you? It’s not that what you you know that don’t know that doesn’t that that hurts you. Excuse me I got it wrong. It’s not what you don’t know that hurts you. It’s what you do know that just ain’t so

I don’t you’re looking at a body. We’ll look at a different way. I’m going to try to present it a different way. You should learn this as a kid. You don’t go diving headfirst into water. can’t when you know you don’t know how deep the water is. Right. Well, you don’t know what is. Basically, saved our hides and our clients hides. I’m not even wrong. Save your hides.

help make us wealthy. Over the past three decades is we don’t go diving into water that we don’t know how deep it is. We just don’t do that. We understand ahead of time that we have portfolios, we own companies, we own businesses that we like, that are going to do well. If we don’t like them, the fundamentals change, we rid ourselves of these things, and we keep doing.

what we’re doing. Meaning dollar cost averaging meaning paying ourselves every single month. I won the podcast last week I read a little bit of that RudeYard Kipling thing you know if you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you. If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you but make allowance for their doubting too and it goes on and on. Reality is is that human beings make horrible investors.

fight or flight response. I’ve talked about this again and again and again. One of my top jobs is keeping people from doing stupid things. I try very, very hard here on the program to educate you and to keep people from doing stupid things. And quite frankly, you know, that’s what CNBC should be talking about most of the day is basically what I echo here on the program would actually save people a ton of money.

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Again, it’s not good for advertising. They’d rather have people on TV that claim to know things. They can see the future and they can’t. Can’t you know the old Clint Eastwood man’s got to understand his limitations. I understand my.

I understand mine and that’s what’s made us successful. Keeping one’s head. Remember we talked about patience and courage when things are going a little bit haywire out there. You need that. Let ask you a question. I’m gonna throw this out there. I don’t remember what Super Bowl it was how many years ago. What was it? The Atlanta Falcons were kicking the crap out of the Patriots. Remember that?

I mean, it was bad. mean, you’re getting the Patriots getting a crap kicked out of them. Do you think that in the locker room, do you think you see Bill Belichick flying off the handle?

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or keep it as cool. We got this. We got this. You lose your head. You lose your composure.

Your ability to really do much, it’s not there. That’s what good leadership does. Okay, smart management of things. You can’t lose your head.

Yeah, that’s again one of the reasons why people lose money again and again and again. you know, investing in pea soup, fog, whiteout, whatever you want to call it. Okay. If you’ve got your portfolio set up the right way, bear none of this any mind. Again, you don’t know how long the pea soup is going to last. You can go back. I said, you know what, that whole great recession was a couple of years.

Couple years that it took to work through that. There have been points in time where it could take some time. But feel confident that when it’s over, and eventually will be over, you’re gonna be sitting pretty. Kids, that’s the reality. Watchdog on wallstreet.com.