Kenneth Fisher
Kenneth Fisher
Kenneth Lawrence Fisheris an American investment analyst and the founder and chairman of Fisher Investments, a money management firm with offices in Woodside, California, San Mateo, California, and Camas, Washington. Fisher writes a monthly column in Forbes magazine, contributes to other financial and news magazines, has written eleven books, and has written research papers in the field of behavioral finance. He is on the 2014 Forbes 400 list of richest Americans and Forbes list of world billionaires, and as of...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionBusinessman
Date of Birth29 November 1950
CountryUnited States of America
Environmentalists should like fracking for its relative cleanliness. But they don't. They have made a bugaboo out of the chemicals in fracking fluids, which supposedly can leach into groundwater sources. I'm convinced they're dead wrong. Ultimately, good technology with a cost advantage will win out over paranoia.
Normally, if you have a huge category that leads a bear market all the way down to the bottom - like tech after 2000, or energy in the '80-'82 bear market - you get one quick pop, and then years of lag as we fight the old war.
Global stocks bottomed in June 1921, but global economies didn't hit bottom for fully two more years.
Italians have always had a high savings rate. They love putting their money into their own government bonds - even more than in houses, stocks and gold. The higher rates climb, the happier they are to invest. So if austerity plans drive rates up, it's music to Italian ears.
What is the most common investor mistake? Trading - getting in and getting out at all the wrong times, for all the wrong reasons.
People do dollar cost averaging because they have regret of making one big mistake. But the fact of the matter is that, mathematically, the market rises more of the time than it falls. It falls, but it rises more of the time than it falls.
Indeed, bull markets are fueled by successive waves of prior skeptics finally capitulating as their fears fade. Eventually, fear turns to euphoria, and that's the stuff of bubbles.
Investors covet past improvements but also always believe pricing unimaginable future creativity and efficiency gains is Pollyannaish. And they're always wrong. Bet on it.
Hundreds of investors ask me questions each year about the dilemmas they confront. Their worst problem? Uncertainty. They are traumatized and become emotional or confused to the state of inaction. Even worse, they try to solve a short-term problem in a way that hurts them financially in the long run.
If you are prepared for some risk, junk bonds pay about 5%, but they tend to get whacked when interest rates rise. Same with lower-yielding but higher-quality corporate bonds.
The bubble, as investing phenomenon, has been well studied ever since the 17th-century tulip bulb frenzy. Its counterpart in bear markets is not well understood.
If you're 35, 45, or even 55 - you have a very long time horizon - 40 years or vastly more. That is you, and/or your spouse, are likely to live about that long, and you'll be investing the whole way.
The more you talk about investing problems, the worse you feel. Instead of complaining, it's better to do something.
In history, the evidence is overwhelming: Stock market bottoms happen, and then stocks jolt upwards while the economy keeps getting worse - sometimes by a lot and for a long time.