Many people will not invest in the stock market. They say they fear it, they’re afraid to take the ‘risk’ of buying shares. But other people know that if they own companies that they buy products from every day, then they will benefit from the profits of the company. They know that they are not the only people who are buying products from these companies.
But is there a risk? Yes, the value will fluctuate and this is something that is known as ‘volatility’, but these prices as whole, tend to fluctuate on an upward trajectory when you look at global stock markets on average. People tend to focus on this volatility and not look at the basics. So, let’s delve into the reasons why we shouldn’t be afraid of investing on the stock market.
Here’s a little story that you may recognise. Frank, was a brewer. Every day he would go to work for his brewery that made 250,000 pints of beer a year. On his way home, every day, Frank would stop by the pub and have a couple of pints. Not only did he like making it, he liked drinking it! But, he rarely drank the beer he made, he liked a number of ales from several different brewers from all around the world. He would jokingly say, he drank other beers as part of his CPD – his Continuing Professional Development. Most brewers do this, they want to sample other brews to taste the flavours they could get using different ingredients.
With 240 working days a year and an average pint charge of £4, Frank was spending £960 a year on beer. And he was earning £30,000 a year from his job.
Over the 30 years he worked for the brewery, he spent £28,800. His net income after tax was £24,400 so it’s well over a year's income.
And yet, he declined to buy into any shares in breweries, or anywhere else for that matter. He felt they were too risky and didn’t want to see his savings decline. And yet, he, like most other brewers was spending his money buying these products. Every day, he bought them. The money he earned was going to fund the pub owner, the bar people, and the very breweries in which they make the sweet amber nectar!
This in microcosm, is what we all do. Most of us have or have had jobs, and we spend the earnings derived from those profitable companies, in those very same companies. EVERY DAY we buy from massive companies that we or our family and friends are employed by. Every day we buy the goods, utilise the services and are influenced by their advertising!
And yet, many people don’t want to own shares in those companies… because they are risky! Even though we are all their customers and most of us work for companies…
Take my hand, we are going for a walk.
In our local shopping centre – Touchwood in Solihull – which I often walk through whether for shopping, going to dinner or just as a shortcut, I pass loads of shops. Some of them, I barely notice as I will never shop there! For example, when you have feet in sizes measured in terms of canal boats, you can’t buy shoes in shops, you have to go to specialist outlets. I never notice a shoe shop, except for when I am feeling blue about my freakish size.
Walking through the shopping centre you will pass the following shops, and I have noted the stock exchange they are registered upon:
Starbucks - NASDAQ
L'Occitane - Hong Kong Stock Exchange
Nespresso – Nestlé - SIX Swiss Exchange
Polestar – Volvo Group - Nasdaq Stockholm stock exchange
H&M - Stockholm Stock Exchange
Apple - NASDAQ
Costa Coffee – owned by The Coca-Cola Company - New York Stock Exchange
3 (phone company) - Hong Kong Stock Exchange (via a holding company)
Hotel Chocolat - London Stock Exchange
Levi - New York Stock Exchange
Next - London Stock Exchange
Pandora - NASDAQ Stockholm Stock Exchange
Vodafone - London Stock Exchange
Every one of these massively successful companies, you can become an owner of. You don’t need permission from anyone. You just need the will to go and buy the shares from a publicly traded stock exchange. You will then benefit from their profits in the form of dividends or growth in their share price.
This is just an example using shops. But, consider what you would be using to get to the shops. You may drive, walk or get the bus. All of those will use a road at some point. A road that may well have been laid using materials from the company Tarmac Trading Ltd which is a subsidiary of CRH Roadstone Holdings which is on the Irish and London stock exchange.
My point here is that we use products of great companies, some of them that have been running for a very long time, every day and often without realising it. If only we could be owners of those companies and benefit from the profits they generate!
Imagine, if you could buy into all the publicly traded companies in the world, simply and at a low cost. You would want to do this globally and to buy into all companies because no one knows which companies will perform the best or go bust (as some surely will). The few that go bust are tempered by also owning the stellar performing companies.
Fortunately, you CAN buy shares in this manner. It is cheap, tax efficient, and the safest way to grow wealth in the long term, should you have commitment and not be scared to sell out when the value dips. At that point, responsibility for the loss lies with you. Bright people will recognise that a permanent loss on investing in the great companies in the world is their responsibility.
If money is your hope for independence, you will never have it. The only real security that a man (ahem... person, Henry!!!) will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience and ability. – Henry Ford
Intelligent people will realise, as they and most of their friends have been employed by companies, that wealth creation starts from companies; that they are part of a global capitalist system of 8 billion people that largely work for companies.
If companies didn’t consistently and on average earn profits – there would be no tax in the form of corporation tax or income tax for governments to employ people.
If companies didn’t consistently and on average earn profits – property markets would collapse as there would be no income to get a mortgage or pay the rent.
If companies didn’t consistently and on average earn profits - there would be no money for people to pay more money for non-productive assets like Gold or Silver.
These are your securities:
Knowledge
We all work to make our lives and the lives of those we love (our families etc.) better. This is an intrinsic human emotion and motivator. This hasn’t changed in the 300,000 years that humans have been on the planet. Why will it change now?
There is no wealth without work. And work is organised and made more productive by companies. We can buy these companies and benefit from the work of the global population. The companies need to raise money to invest in their products or services to make a profit and they raise this on stock markets.
Trust that people will continue to work and if you invest in them, on average, you will gain a healthy profit.
Experience
Everyone starts out without experience! But, ‘experience’ does not necessarily have to be yours. We can take the experience of well over 100 years of research and real-life outcomes and see what has happened. We do not need to be invested ourselves to have had this ‘experience’.
The advisers at Lucent Financial Planning have experience. We have dealt with hundreds of families and seen the successful outcomes. We have taken the research mentioned above and seen the outcomes with our own eyes, ever since we were established in 2009.
Ability
Everything you need and require from life, you do not have ability to do. Chances are you do not know how to:
Tarmac a road
Install a gas boiler, heat pump or solar panels
Grow wheat and mill it and even make your own bread from the flour.
Install a toilet and shower
You do not need to have the ability to invest widely and to take on the responsibility of all your emotions when prices fall and rise and do the right thing. You do not need to know all tax laws to invest in the most efficient way.
Lucent Financial Planning have the ability to do all this. We are highly knowledgeable, experienced, caring and empathetic advisers. Allow us to do it, confident in the knowledge that we have superior ability to do so. Just like you trust in your plumber, miller (I know you don’t think you have a miller, but how do you think this white stuff gets ground up!) and electrician.
We have helped hundreds of families and we would be happy to help you too. Our process works and has been back-tested over one hundred years based on evidence. Not rumour or grand statements, but on evidence.
We are experiencing an uptick in enquiries following winning Lifestyle Financial Planner of the Year 2023 (see separate article) and so we would encourage you to contact us as soon as possible because there are only so many clients we are able to service.