Image Credit: Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, “Julie Le Brun Looking into a Mirror” (ca. 1786), Metropolitan Museum of Art
By Jason Zweig | March 13, 2020 11:00 am ET
With U.S. stocks down — at their worst — around 27% in 16 trading days, investors need to get out of the prognostication business. Nobody — not epidemiologists, not government officials, not economists and certainly not market strategists — can say how large an impact the coronavirus will end up having. The optimists might be wrong; so might the pessimists.
Investing, now more than ever, is about controlling the controllable. You can’t control the markets. You can’t control the coronavirus. You can control your own behavior, although that requires making accurate, honest predictions about yourself.
Controlling the controllable doesn’t just mean shrugging off whatever is out of your power. It also means putting some calm and serious thought into what is within your power. Your future success may depend less on what markets do — and more on spending a few quiet minutes figuring out who you are as an investor.…
To read the rest of the column:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/stocks-are-cratering-control-the-one-thing-you-can-11584055737
For further reading:
Books:
Benjamin Graham, The Intelligent Investor
Jason Zweig,The Devil’s Financial Dictionary
Jason Zweig, Your Money and Your Brain
Jason Zweig, The Little Book of Safe Money
Articles and other resources:
When the Stock Market Plunges…Will You Be Brave or Will You Cave?