Hopefully everyone got some laughs this April Fool’s! It’s always good to poke fun at yourself once in a while to stay grounded. Yes, Twitter is indeed like high school where there are gang ups, non-stop gossiping, and outbursts of hormonal rage. One of the main reasons why Disney decided to back out from their purchase of Twitter was due to the fear that all the hate would spill over and tarnish its reputation.

Anyway, I stand by my belief that if you are a happy person with a healthy dose of self-esteem, it’s hard to tell others to f off once you have f you money. Money simply magnifies who you already are. Let’s show empathy to the ones who dislike us the most.

For 2018 and beyond, I’ve decided to do things a little differently by taking away the absolute dollar amounts I invest. Given that there’s been so much rage against the middle class in expensive coastal cities, I don’t want the numbers to be a distraction. Only my family cares about how much we invest anyway.

When I sold my rental house, I thought my stress would go down at least 80%. After all, my tenants and the maintenance issues were really bumming me out. But what I didn’t anticipate was the rise in stress from having to reinvest a sum 4X greater than I had ever invested before. The last thing I wanted to do was turn a strong performing investment since 2005 into a poor one going forward.

I went through many hours of deliberation regarding where to invest the proceeds. I wrote quarterly investment reports to track my progress. I stayed glued to the laptop during market hours for months trying to buy stocks and bonds during pullbacks. Further, I went out to dinner with the RealtyShares investment committee twice to do more due diligence on their investment process before deploying $500,000 in additional capital. It was exhausting.

As someone who worked in the finance industry, consulted with a couple digital wealth advisors, and who has been investing his own money for over 20 years, I was familiar with the entire process of managing money. However, I’ve finally reached an inflection point. 

When the S&P 500 futures were pointing to another -5% opening on February 6, 2018 I got excited. After all, the S&P 500 closed down 4.5% on February 5. I get aggressive whenever the stock market corrects by 10% or more because history has shown positive returns in subsequent days and months.

The initial down 5% move was blamed on the 10-year bond yield jumping to 2.85%. But since the 10-year bond yield declined from 2.85% to 2.75% after the 5% stock market drop, and futures were signaling another 5% drop in the stock market, I figured it was time to deploy some significant cash. Fundamentally, corporate earnings growth and economic indicators were still sound.

Armed with $200,000, my plan was to use $100,000 to buy the morning gap down and deploy the remaining $100,000 throughout the day just in case the stock market panicked even further. I set my alarm clock for 6:15am just in case, brushed my teeth, sat on the toilet, and fired up my Fidelity account to put in my $100,000 buy order.

This post is a reminder to myself and to all of you that we can and will lose money if we invest in risk assets for a long enough period of time. The only way to never lose money again is if we never make any investments.

I’ve personally reached a level of investing discomfort that feels a little bit scary. After deploying a couple bucks in 2017, I invested a large chunk of change in the stock market during the first week of 2018. After all, I wrote in my 2018 outlook that 2018 would be the last year of good times. Not following through with my beliefs would be a waste of time.

The problem right now is that it feels like I’m suffering from investing FOMO and so are many of you. When you experience FOMO, you tend to do some incredibly irrational things. I hate the way money can make us greedy. Hopefully, this post will help those of you who feel the same take a pause and think about risk more. 

I recently stumbled across a fascinating chart by Deutsche Bank highlighting that more families than ever before have ZERO or NEGATIVE non-home wealth. In other words, roughly 30% of households have no 401k, no IRA, no after-tax investment account, no private equity investments, no venture debt investments, no nothing beyond the value of their primary residence!

Check out the chart below.