It's not unusual for me to put these columns together from the waiting lounge of one airport or another. Today I am at Logan Airport, the second stop in a three-city
conference tour.
I've seen a lot of cool things along the way.
Yesterday I was able to tour the JFK Presidential Library in Boston. I even saw the game-changing technology of a 3D printer in action.
As fun and inspiring and amazing as those other things were, one the highlights of the trip was a luncheon with Nick Murray. Murray has been extraordinarily influential in the development of my thinking on how to accumulate and manage wealth.
In the 1990s, a colleague of mine gave me a copy of Murray's book The Excellent Investment Advisor. It was as if a fog of obfuscation had lifted, revealing to me a clear, true vision of how to invest successfully over a lifetime, a vision with meaningful differences from the marketing-driven propaganda so prevalent in a world that has a
nine-second attention span.
I thought I would try to get Murray to autograph my original copy of The Excellent Investment Advisor, so I brought it on the trip with me. And, since I had the book with me, I re-read it one more time.
At the luncheon a neat thing happened.
Murray's speech could have been taken verbatim from this book that is now 16 years old. I love that. When wisdom stands the test of time you know that it's true wisdom.
I have seen this before. I attended Warren Buffett's annual meeting for ten consecutive years. But that was not ten separate experiences; it was the same experience repeated ten times over. Warren Buffett's beliefs do not waiver depending on which way the wind is blowing. I take great comfort in that.
So, to hear Nick Murray sharing the same wisdom now that he was sharing in 1996 was
pretty cool.
After all, think of what's happened in the interim. Amongst other things, we have had the boom, bubble and collapse of tech stocks, Y2K, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the U.S. housing bubble, the Great Recession, gold prices quadrupling, the re-emergence of China as a great economic power, and, in spite of all this and although he has written many other books in the meantime, Nick Murray is still saying the same things that he was saying in 1996.
The reason that Murray's material stands the test of time in a quickly evolving world is that one of Murray's specialties is in behavioural finance, and human behaviour doesn't change. The ironic part is that many people are predisposed to do the wrong thing at the wrong time; the implication being that often the job of a financial advisor is to protect clients from their own fear and greed.
Here are some words of wisdom from Nick Murray.
"It always looks like the wrong time to invest in equities. And, long-term, it's always the right time to invest in equities."
"All long-term security is purchased at the price of short-term insecurity."
"Whatever the apocalypse du jour is, we've survived - and prospered after - much worse. Do you think that the U.S. economy could survive an 86 per cent drop in stock prices and a 27 per cent unemployment rate? Well, it not only can, but - in 1929-32 - it did."
"Someday all financial journalism will have to carry a warning. 'Nothing that happens in the next 30 days will matter in 20 years.'"
"Short-term, the equity markets hate uncertainty - so periods of great uncertainty usually offer great opportunity. If you wait until the uncertainty is resolved, the market's already gone."
I subscribe to a monthly newsletter service authored by Nick Murray. Each month he lends perspective to what is going on. If you would like to receive the client version of the Nick Murray newsletter just let me know and I'll add you to our email service.
The opinions expressed are those of Brad Brain, CFP, R.F.P. CLU, CH.F.C., FCSI. Brad Brain is a Certified Financial Planner with Manulife Securities Incorporated, Member CIPF, in Fort St John, BC. Brad Brain can be reached at [email protected] or www.bradbrainfinancial.com.
