A Lesson On Investing From My Child

Read Time / 2 Minutes

Theme / Behavioral Finance

It always ended with soap in my mouth.

The movie, Selena, featuring Jennifer Lopez, was a childhood staple.  There’s no doubt having two older sisters played an influential role on the types of movies we grew up watching.    Though it’s challenging recalling moments from my past, let alone childhood, one memory stands strong — I’m around 5 years old, dancing (more like running) around by the warm window in my parent’s master bedroom in our 1,042 square foot San Jose home, performing the scene of the movie where Selena sings, “Won’t you take me to funky town.”  

Catchy lyrics, right?  But, this earworm had side effects. 

“Now, what’s wrong with those lyrics?” you may wonder.  Did Steven Greenberg have a secret message behind his song that seems to be talking about his desire to move from Minneapolis to the Big Apple?  Though I can’t speak to a secret meaning to this song, what I do know now is if you want to yodel this tune safely around your parents you best know how to say the word, funky, correctly.  Oh, how I wish I learned the first time.

In the book The Behavior Gap, Carl Richards describes investor behavior with this graph.  It’s a light hearted way of describing the human condition when it comes to investment market conditions.  

We often look at this graph and chuckle, “silly, investors making silly choices.”  True!  Yet, we often forget of our own humanity.  When the market is doing well, we think it’s time to buy.  As the market drops, we tend to sell.  We repeat until we run out of money.

Proverbs gently puts it “like a dog returns to its vomit a fool returns to its folly” (26:11).  People have reinterpreted insanity as the act of the doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.  Whether it’s insanity or not, the Bible clearly shares we should explore a wiser approach.

Though I mis-sang the words to “Funky Town” more than once, eventually I learned what I needed to do to keep the bar of soap, in my parents’ hand, a safe distance from my mouth.

Ryan De Amicis

Wealth Advisor

408.758.6413

ryan@christianwm.com