When the Market Wobbles, What Holds?

"Your investment strategy should be as fixed as your target — and as flexible as your tactics." — Steve Martin, Vision-Keeper and Dream Coach

Epictetus said that the man who fixes on a target cannot be disturbed.

I wish I had put that on my business card twenty-five years ago.

Because the number one destroyer of long-term financial success is not a bad investment.

It's a lost target.

I have watched intelligent, well-intentioned people make a sound, appropriate, well-researched financial decision — and then unmake it three months later because the market moved, or a friend said something, or a cable news segment alarmed them. Not because the fundamentals changed. Because the noise got loud.

When you don't have a fixed financial target — a clear understanding of what this money is for, what kind of life I'm building — every market fluctuation is existentially threatening.

When you do have a fixed financial target, a 10% correction is a weather event. Uncomfortable. Manageable. Not a reason to stop going outside.

Here's what I ask every client in our first meaningful conversation: what are you funding?

Not: what are your investment goals. Not: what is your risk tolerance (we'll get there). But: what are you funding?

A certain kind of retirement? An education legacy that keeps going for generations? The ability to give generously to causes that matter? The freedom to work three days a week doing what you love?

What are you funding?

That is your financial target.

And here is the Epictetan promise: once you fix it, once you can describe it clearly and feel it in your chest, the noise of the market becomes navigable.

Not painless. Navigable.

Because every gyration gets evaluated against the same fixed question: Does this decision still serve the life I'm building or doesn't it?

If the fundamentals of your plan haven't changed, the answer is almost always yes. Stay the course. Let your funds do what they were built to do. Let compound interest run its slow, reliable, extraordinary marathon.

Fix the target.

Hold the line.

Cannot be disturbed.

I would love to hear your thoughts. Email me here.