- Investors can’t expect stocks to go up every year
- But should we care more about those that (nearly) do?
In investing, many people place a high value on consistency. If you rely on your investments for daily spending, then a desire for regularity is perfectly understandable – which is why there will always be a demand for financial products that do just that, like fixed rate savings accounts or annuities.
Even if your investment portfolio isn’t a source of income, consistency matters. Unfortunately, market-traded securities come with fewer guarantees. By locking in a set return over several years, bonds and preference shares’ share some characteristics with annuities. But as the past couple of years have shown, they offer little in the way of price consistency when their returns get swallowed up by inflation.