When I woke up the day after the U.S. election to learn that Donald Trump would, once again, become president of the United States, the temptation to panic and sell my investments kicked in as it did in 2016. Then, I’d just quit my job, joining the ranks of people who are Financially Independent and Retired Early (FIRE), and started living off the capital gains, dividends and interest of my portfolio.
I don’t have nerves of steel. I get nervous during turbulence on planes. I’m terrified of heights. And as someone who grew up in China on 44 cents a day, my parents told me that only savings accounts and houses are safe. Investing feels as foreign to me as the hot showers, drinkable tap water and central heating felt when I first came to Canada.
But knowing that my portfolio not only survived the calamities of the past eight years, but thrived and doubled, gives me confidence to stay the course. If you find investing in the stock market terrifying, especially given this election result, you can use the three Ds of investing to stay calm and focused.
Diversification
Having a diversified portfolio means that you don’t invest in individual stocks. Instead, you buy exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that track specific indexes. For example, one of the ETFs I own in my portfolio is VTI (Vanguard Total Stock Market Index) which tracks the entire U.S equity market and holds over 3,700 stocks, including small-, mid- and large-cap companies.
Another way I diversify my portfolio is by adding an international ETF that gives me exposure to European, Asian and Australian stock markets. Global diversification, in addition to stock diversification, ensures that one country’s politics and economics can’t ruin my retirement.
Dividends
If you had an orange orchard, the trees would be the stocks, and the oranges would be the dividends in your portfolio. When you sell stocks, you either harvest capital gains or sustain capital losses. But selling is like digging up some of your orange trees.
Dividends, however, get paid out regardless of the capital value of your stocks and you don’t need to sell anything. This is like harvesting and eating the oranges. You’re not hurting the tree, and it will continue to grow.
Since I retired, I realized that you could build an additional level of retirement safety by keeping your basic living expenses (rent, food, utilities, etc.) within the dividend and interest income of your portfolio. Other “nice to have” things like travel can be paid for by selling stocks if you’ve just had a good year, but if you’ve just had a down year, you don’t have to.
Living off your dividends helps you stay invested during market crashes because you’re getting paid regardless of the capital value of your stocks.
Dollar-cost averaging
Dollar-cost averaging is the concept of buying stocks at regular intervals, regardless of price. So instead of dumping in all your money and picking up stocks at a single price point, you are “averaging” out the cost over time. This strategy helps beginner investors get comfortable with the idea of investing because instead of jumping into the deep end and investing their life savings all at once, they are wading into these waters slowly.
It also helps with market crashes. Rather than selling everything and going to cash, you keep investing as the market falls, which allows you to buy ETFs at better prices. It’s how we got through the financial crisis of 2008, and it’s how we’re going to get through future stock market crashes.
According to a 10-year study done by Fidelity, the best-performing group of clients were those who’d forgotten they had accounts. The reason for this is that most investors are nervous and try to time the markets based on what they hear in the news.
Despite multiple stock market dips since we’ve stopped working, our FIRE approach has not wavered. That’s because seasoned FIRE investors know that no matter what happens in the world, over the long term the stock market will keep rising, so if you’ve built a globally diversified, dividend-yielding portfolio, and use dollar-cost averaging to keep putting your savings into it, you’ll be richer over the long run.
Kristy Shen and Bryce Leung retired in their 30s and are authors of the bestselling book Quit Like a Millionaire.
