Eagle's Wins & Investing, They're Not Always Pretty

Eagle's Wins & Investing, They're Not Always Pretty

by: Brendan Magee

Unless you are an Eagle's or Giant's fan, you probably turned off last night's game after the second quarter. The game was sloppily played by both teams. Fumbles, interceptions, dumb penalties and bad play were par for the course.  The Eagles just made fewer costly mistakes than the Giants. However, as someone who sat in Franklin Field watching some of the most God awful football teams ever, I will gladly take the win.

Now neither team practices, or trains, as Chip Kelly calls it, all week long to go out there and play lousy football. These are tremendous athletes who have a lot of pride, and the last thing either team wants to do is look bad in front of a national television audience. Sometimes, it just works out that way.However, no matter how bad each team may have played, there is one thing that pretty much holds true in every football game, the team that controls the line of scrimmage usually wins the game. Anyone watching last night's game could clearly see that the Eagle's offensive and defensive lines controlled the line of scrimmage.The longer runs and the longer passes for the most part belonged to the Eagles and ultimately they came away with a decisive victory.

The same type of scenario can be said of investing. It's not always pretty, but the person who sticks to the principles of investing ultimately prevails.

There can be years of unexpected losses, flat returns, returns that lag behind media driven benchmarks, times when the idea of buy and hold makes you want to kill somebody, and your adviser has to be on drugs if he wants you to rebalance into asset classes that are down 40 percent. Oh my God! We are out of Scotch again? Investing is not always a walk in the park.

Like blocking and tackling there is grunt work and who ever sticks to it the longest eventually wins. Owning equities, diversifying, and rebalancing away from top performing investments into investments that haven't performed or are down is the formula for long-term investing success. Just like avoiding the latest fad running the National Football League, resisting the lure of the hot investment of the day or abstaining from the investment analyst whose prediction just happened to come true is not easy.

As an Eagle's fan I really don't care if the Eagles win the ugliest played Super Bowl in history. Before I leave this Earth, I would like to see a parade down Broad Street. I am sure Jeffrey Laurie would not give the Lombardi Trophy back simply because the Eagle didn't win a beautifully played game. Football success, nor investment success, ever comes to those who don't do the grunt work.

Brendan Magee is the founder and president of Inevitable Wealth Coaching. With comment or question go to www.coachgee.com or call 610-446-4322.