Dealing with the Ups and Downs

One of the things that is very hard with investing in the share market is dealing with volatility. Stocks and ETFs go up and down in price every weekday, and it can be hard to not want constantly to buy and sell. But history has taught us that you are often better to sit and do nothing. Warren Buffett has said that you should be ok for the market to close for a decade. I for one am guilty for looking at the market every day, and I shouldn't. It is common human phycology for us to feel losses more than we do gains.

For the last two weeks, I have been feeling the share market paper losses quite a bit, even though they have been pretty minor. My ETFs are down about 2%, actually even less. And I'm feeling some days like selling everything. It's crazy, but that's what our phycology can do to us sometimes. There are a couple of stocks that are, or have become losers, that I think I will sell. Its best though that I do some research before I make my final decision. With Spark I think that it has become a dog and has possibly always been one. Their revenue growth has always been slow, even when they were Telecom last millennium. With any holding in the satellite part of your portfolio, it should have good revenue and profit growth that will give the share price the opportunity to beat the market ETF holdings in your core portfolio. With multiple years of single digit increases or decreases in revenue, Spark was never going to beat the market. It is a great example of why you shouldn't buy a stock just because of a high dividend yield alone.

In my Hatch account, I have seen Eli Lily have a great run in 2026, and Berkshire has come back into the green. Visa has been steady as it should be, and Microsoft has been doing okay. I think it is really important to always try to make sound decisions, and to always think before pulling the trigger on a buy or sell. A big problem for me, is that I'm too quick to sell winners, and I can let losses get too big. This again, is a human emotion thing. You don't want to sell and crystalize losses, but it feels good to sell and crystalize winners. But what we should often be doing is the opposite; winners keep winning and losers keep losing. Ebos is an interesting case in point. I sold half of my position at around $40, and it now sits at about $23. If I sold the rest of my position now, I would get around break-even from the initial buy price. However, all analysts are positive on the stock and revenue projections show consistent growth forecasts. The business got really hit when they lost the contract to supply drugs to Chemist Warehouse. But they still have a solid pharmaceutical distribution and animal health business in Australasia and Singapore. As much as my emotion would like me to think that they are a dog, research tells me that they are not.

It can be hard to keep a level head sometimes with the stock market. But if you remember the old Warren Buffett credo that stockholdings are an equity share in a business, you will remember to research the business before letting your emotions get in the way.