Thank you for joining me for Episode 3 of my NEW Money Wisdom Question Series, where I film answers to common financial and retirement investment questions in 2 minutes or less. Today I want to talk about buying and selling stocks right now.

A lot of people are saying, should I buy stocks right now? On the other side of that, is should I sell stocks right now? The answer is twofold.

Part of the answer is that I can’t make a recommendation to you unless I know your individual situation. Now, I know that sounds cliché. I know that’s annoying to some of you that have heard that so many times, but it’s absolutely the truth. We are fiduciaries here at Johnson Brunetti and I can’t just tell you to buy stocks or not. I’ve got to know your situation. That said though, I want to talk a little bit about what goes on behind the decision of if you should buy stocks or not.

Market Timing

First of all, I believe if you’re going to buy stocks right now, for the short-term, thinking the market is either going to bounce back. Or maybe you’re going to wait until it goes down a little bit farther and then you’ll buy stocks, that’s what we call market timing.

Market timing is when you are trying to decide or you’re trying to bet on the fact that, let’s say in the next 6 to 12 months, the market is going to do what you expect it to do. You get into kind of a dangerous neighborhood there when you try to time the market. Even the best investors are wrong. In fact, they’re wrong a lot. So, I would caution you against market timing unless you have money that’s completely speculative in nature.

Mad Money

One of my friends calls it “Mad Money”. If you have your retirement all set, your long-term goals set, your medium-term investments set aside, your emergency savings, and you have some money you want to speculate with, then by all means there’s nothing wrong with betting in the short-term if the market’s going to go up or down.

In Conclusion…

Again, hear me, please. You need to make sure that your medium-term and long-term financial planning is in order. Is the market going to go up? I don’t know. Is the market going to go down? I don’t know in the short-term. I can make a guess of where it’s going to be five and 10 years from now. I own a lot of stocks. I bought stocks recently, but I’m not buying them for the short-term.

So that’s my opinion on whether you should buy stocks or not. I would be glad to talk with you at some point if you want to talk one-on-one about your individual situation.  

Thanks for joining me and I hope you found this information helpful!

P.S. If you enjoyed this topic and you want to hear more, you’ll love this podcast episode I recorded where I talk about the same subject, in more detail.

P.P.S. Feel free to submit questions here for a chance to have them answered!