Why SVB Is Important For Your Portfolio
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On March 8th, SVB was trading at $267 per share. By March 10th, you couldn’t give your SVB stock away. Investors lost $16 billion in 2 days.
It’s easy to say, in hindsight, that it couldn’t happen to you, but there are some 8500 employees who just lost tens of millions of dollars in their company stock. Some of those individuals had over $1 million in stock themselves.
And this isn’t the first time this has happened.
When Enron went belly-up, investors lost $74 billion.
The WorldCom blowup amounted to $175 billion.
Both of those company’s had a culture that included owning company stock.
And stocks don’t have to go to zero to hurt you really bad. Countless public companies have been acquired after their stock prices stumbled.
So, what’s the lesson?
Diversify.
Yes, it’s boring. You won’t get rich without concentrating your investments on the winners. But the problem is you don’t know who the winners will be.
In long-term investing, the key is survival. If you can put together a portfolio that gives you market returns and hold that portfolio for decades, you will win the investing game.
Anything else, and you are likely to blow yourself up.
Let’s not own enough of something to make a killing and let’s not own enough of something that kills us.