Never Leave Fish To Find Fish

We spent 10 blissful days in Costa Rica over the Easter Holidays. Al’s biggest love in life is surfing, something he doesn’t get to do enough of in Cayman. This was our first family trip dedicated to surfing (as I was repeatedly reminded). We rose early in the morning, on the beach ready for lessons by 7am, (the kids at least…I mostly ran or read, but I did venture into the surf to get photo evidence), then off for a big and lazy breakfast, before heading back to our Airbnb to escape the midday heat.

The surf school we used was amazing and they had a videographer on the beach which meant the early afternoons were spent with the instructor analysing everyone’s technique. Overkill maybe, but that half an hour or so seemed to fill everyone’s cup. Then of course, back to the beach for the later afternoon/evening surf.

All beaches are magical at sunset but there’s something about a surf beach at sunset. The calm bustle of surfers going out and coming in from the waves. It’s very captivating and serene.

We ate really well in Costa Rica. The food is fresh and nutritious. We found a couple of places we loved that we went back to. One morning whilst discussing where to have breakfast and whether to try somewhere new, Will, our 10-year-old, quipped “never leave fish to find fish”.

“Wow,” I said. “Explain.”

“Well,” came his answer, “we know there is a really good place over there, so why leave that to look for somewhere else that we don’t know. A good fisherman never leaves fish to find fish.”

Wise words from a 10-year-old.

It’s a bit of a “grass is greener” thing, isn’t it. You think there might be something down the road that is better than the thing you have here, right now.

Or back to the fish, there are fish biting here, but maybe there are bigger fish biting by that boat in the distance. If you leave in search of the bigger fish, the fish you have now will be gone.

So, guess what? We went back to the place we knew and loved. Boring but safe, I suppose.

We don’t always want to be boring but safe – we’d never experience the world, or have adventures, or put ourselves outside our comfort zone (something I talked about here).

But when it comes to our money and investments, boring but safe is a good option.

Never leave fish to find fish.

There’s this thing you have here – a beautifully diversified portfolio of the most successful, enduring and profitable businesses in the world. But it’s had a tough few years, and the temptation, particularly for those who have only started investing over the last few years, is to say, “I’m done with this, these fish aren’t big enough, I am off to find new fish.” (I’m investing my money and nothing is happening).

Maybe it’s a property that looks like a ‘sure thing’ or the promise of oversized returns from some new trading strategy that happens to be working at this particular moment.

The pull is strong. Those fish are big! So you leave the fish you have right here, you sell, and go in search of new fish.

You had it – you had the sweet spot, you were on it! You just needed patience. The big fish were there, following the smaller ones, waiting to pounce.

Now the fish that were in the other spot are gone.

And where are you? Languishing in the middle of the ocean, really unsure of which way to go next.

And that’s the conundrum with investing – it’s boring, boring, boring (and sometimes really hard) and then suddenly it becomes exciting. More exciting than you ever imagined possible. It’s like there are so many fish around you that you can’t even get enough rods into the water.

Josh Brown explained this beautifully in a podcast recently whilst talking about stock market cycles.

He said:

“Your job as an investor is not to predict necessarily the start and stop because a lot of this is hindsight. It’s to mentally prepare yourself for the fact that you might go 8 years investing in a stock market that ends up going nowhere but if you keep doing that, when it does break into the next secular bull market, you will make more money than you ever imagined possible. That’s your job.”

He goes on to explain that this is just how it works – it’s the luck of the draw and we can’t control where we are in the cycle. We just have to acknowledge that things will change.

So there it is, keep doing it. Keep the rod in the water – the fish are there! Keep buying. Just keep buying. Don’t leave the fish to find fish.

My son was right. The breakfast was the best we ever had.

Georgie

georgie@libertywealth.ky