The Investor Who Stayed the Course: Lessons in Long-Term Investing
By Drake Richey
There is a photograph that used to hang in many brokerage offices, the kind of place with wood paneling and a ticker tape machine in the corner, where men in suits watched numbers scroll by on a screen the size of a shoebox. The message was implicit: patience pays.
Nobody hangs that photograph anymore. Markets are quoted by the millisecond now. Portfolios live in our pockets. The infrastructure of modern investing is designed almost perfectly to make long-term thinking feel impossible. Yet the oldest lesson in investing has not changed at all.
Two Types of Investors
Not everyone experiences market volatility the same way. Some investors have been certain since 1987 that the next market crash is always six months away. They remain perpetually braced, perpetually on the sidelines, missing decades of compounding in exchange for an anxiety they never quite shed. Others seem constitutionally unaware that markets can go down at all. For them, every dip is a buying opportunity, and every warning sign is just noise.
Neither disposition is really investing. One is chronic worry wearing a portfolio. The other is confidence without a foundation.
The crashes and corrections that look obvious in hindsight, the dot-com bust, the 2008 financial crisis, and the sharp market drop in early 2020, felt in the moment like they might be the one that would not recover. Like this time, the bottom might not hold. The long arc of the market has rewarded neither extreme. Those who can tolerate uncertainty without being controlled by it understand the rationale behind their allocation and how it is designed to address a range of potential market conditions.
The Case for Clarity in Investing
There was something clarifying about the old passbook savings account, the kind the bank stamped by hand every time you made a deposit. It was not sophisticated. The returns were modest. But you always knew exactly where you stood. That transparency built something important: the patience to leave it alone.
The same principle applies today. Investors may be more likely to remain committed to a strategy they understand, which can influence long-term behavior, though it does not guarantee improved performance. Complexity has its place, but when a portfolio becomes too intricate to explain over dinner, it also becomes too intricate to hold onto when markets become uncomfortable. Clarity is not a consolation prize for simpler minds. It is a competitive advantage.
A Different Measure of Investment Performance
The most important investment question is not, “How did my portfolio perform last quarter?” It is, “Am I still on track for what actually matters?”
Those are different questions. The first is about returns. The second is about purpose.
At Bush & Company, we have worked with families through multiple market cycles, the optimism, the fear, and the recoveries that always seemed improbable until they were not. In our experience working with clients, those who have a clear financial plan often report greater confidence during periods of market volatility. What we have observed consistently is that the families who navigate volatility best are the ones with a financial plan they understood before the storm arrived.
All investments involve risk, including the possible loss of principal. It is also important to note that past performance is not indicative of future results. It takes conviction to remain committed to a long-term plan of action. Investors who are able to engage with a pre-set plan do not just have discipline, or blind faith, but rather they have clarity about the reasons they selected the current allocation.
Clarity is worth building before you need it.
