Young means Equity &The Fallacy of time diversification

From my earlier post against diversification, let me take time to address the flawed logic people have about diversification which is captured well in Jordan, Miller and Dolvin book on Valuation and Management.

Has anyone ever told you “ You’re young, so you should have a large amount of equity in your portfolio?  I know some of the people I coached during my early days of the Investment Coaching would say, Yes Patrick, you told me that. Well, while this advice could be true, the argument frequently used to support the strategy is generally incorrect. People say, although stocks are more volatile in any given year, over time this volatility cancels itself out. Investment professionals say this is a flawed argument. And they refer to the phenomenon as time diversification fallacy.

Jordan, Miller and Dolvin helped with this line of reasoning. You might remember from your statistics class that we can add  variances together. The fact means that annual variance grows each year by multiplying annual variance by the number of years. Standard deviations (SD) cannot be added together because the SD is the square root of the variance, however, an annual SD grows each year by the square roots of the number of years.  This feature is very handy when we are describing the returns and risk of an investment.  For example, If  we take a randomly selected portfolio of large –cap stocks of standard deviation of about 20%, and hold this portfolio for 16 years, the SD would be about 80%, which is 20% multiplied by the square root of 16.

Bottom line: Volatility increases over time – Volatility does not “cancel out” over time.  Whiles investing in equity gives you a large chance of having a portfolio with extremely large value, it also increases the probability of ending with a really low value.

So, should younger investors put more money into equity?  Probably YES, but for a more logical reason other than the reasoning underlying the fallacy of time diversification.

It is advised by professionals that, if you are young and your portfolio suffers a steep decline in a particular year, you should make up for this loss by changing your work habits / job / source of income or getting a second source of income.  People approaching retirement have little future earning power hence a major loss will have larger impact on their wealth no wonder the young should rather consider more equity.

Why you should put all your eggs in one basket

Today I was reviewing my Investment Coaching notes and preparing for my next session and then I came across a quote from Will Rogers that says; 

“Don’t gamble! Take all your savings and buy some good stock and hold it till it goes up. If it won’t go up, don’t buy it.” 

 I think it is a very deep quote that will get you  to do more work on finding a good stock than you will expect. It seems as a good Investment policy to adopt but the questions that will follow are; how do you know it will go up? How do you get rid of some risk though diversification?

After thinking this through over and over again, I strongly agree that when the right work is done in finding the right and good stock / company, putting everything you’ve got in it is simple a smart move allowing yourself to achieve high long term growth even if that means accepting some significant short term swings in value.  I am very much aware of the squad at the other side of the room with the view that, it is unwise to put all your eggs in one basket.  My question to them is what if the basket is well protected and the eggs are so safe that nothing can go wrong?  

I see that form of investment as a way of building your wont small cap company and enjoying the returns. With you putting in more and more, you may even get to enjoy some degree of management control.  According to Rich Dad, Kiyosaki, this will require the Three E’s- Excessive cash, Education and Experience. He called it the Insider Investor.

Bottom Line: Spreading investment across a number of assets will eliminate risk but not all of the risk and hence you should rather Take all your savings and buy some good stock and hold it till it goes up. If it won’t go up, don’t buy it.