Seminars that I am going to skip in 2013 are investment seminars. Generally, you sit for about an hour listening to a clean shaven, well dressed, slick presenter telling you what investments are going to out perform all others in the coming year.
I just don’t believe them and wonder how they can sleep at night. Probably quite well with the money they earn!
At least they can afford a comfortable pillow – not like some of their clients who have lost a fortune in the markets.
They remind me of recovering gamblers. They always see the positive – the graphs they show you are amazing. They always have an arrow at the bottom of the graph and it is going to go through the roof. For some reason they never pull up last year’s presentation and go over what they predicted. Strange that!
Don’t get me wrong, I have listen to Economists that are regularly on TV, radio and write for business papers. Their message is clear…
INVEST NOW
They know what going to be the next big investment. Coincidentally, it happens to be a product from the Insurance Company that they are getting paid by.
My own personal opinion is they haven’t got a clue, no more than the Clairvoyant in Australia who told my Scottish wife she was going to travel lots. Well, she was right because we did travel a lot of traveling to get back home! To this day my wife still thinks this Clairvoyant was brilliant. Me, I just think she heard an accent, said a couple of general points and pocketed our money.
These presenters are no different, they choose materials to support their guesses. Yes, I did say guesses because anyone who tells you they can predict the markets are liars. It’s just legalised gambling – instead of putting your money on horses, they present an investment package wrapped up with shiny brochures, plus graphs that show that, if you invested 5-years ago, you could have retired a millionaire.
SO INVEST NOW!!!!!
The facts are that some people have done well by investing in the markets. However, most don’t. Me personally, I prefer to clear my mortgage debt and put my nest egg into a simple deposit based investment.
I just don’t have the stomach to be a serious gambler with my hard-earned money.
Allan Matthew Cuthbert t/a Financial Wellbeing is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland to advice on Mortgage,Savings, Life and Pension products
