Settling the unsettling minds of investors in this downturn market
September 21st, 2008 by ALVIN SOONG
Recently some of the clients who forgot and didn’t understand fully the investment concepts we explained to them before. Some of them had investments ILP done as long as 2-3 yrs ago. Most of the people who are unsettled we found, have short term time horizon and though they claim they have high risk appetite in bull market times, they turn out to have low risk appetites in bear market times.
As such we had to re explain to them that in longer term (not just holding for 1 -2 or even 3 years) they would recover their profits, based on cycles. Most understood. There were 2 of our clients who didn’t understood and forgotten what we had told them. In the end, they terminated their policies.
It is disappointing that at bull market or good times, some people became overwhelmed with greed (even though we had told them)
It is even more dissapointing that at bear market or bad times, some people got overwhelmed with fear, forgot what the advisor had told them before, and pinpoint the fingers at them.
Luckily I had a lot of understanding clients except the 2 ( a foreigner who is much nicer to call me to find out and a local auntie- which we mentioned in last friday’s blog) clients we mentioned.
