I’ve Invested My Money, Now What?

This article was originally published in December 2014 and has been updated in February 2026 to reflect current information.

Investing money successfully isn’t easy. If it were, everyone would be rich. There is no holy grail. No magic, risk-free formula that guarantees success and worry-free sleep. Investing involves risk. You can manage it, but you can’t eliminate it.

At its core, though, investing is surprisingly simple. It’s really a two-step process:

1. Invest your money.
2. Monitor and adjust your investments over time.

Most people are fairly good at step one. Finding an experienced and trustworthy advisor, allocating across asset classes, diversifying, and balancing position sizes are relatively intuitive processes. Choosing high-quality stocks and bonds and assembling a portfolio is straightforward, and there are plenty of independent resources available to guide investors.

Unfortunately, many people struggle with step two: adjusting and managing their portfolios. What you do after you’ve invested, and how you behave, may be more important to long-term returns than the individual holdings themselves.

Why? Human nature.

In times of stress, investors can make poor decisions, and the stock market can be very good at providing times of stress. When markets fall sharply, some investors react out of fear and sell at inopportune times. When markets rise quickly, others may feel pressure to chase performance.

One thing you can be sure of: the markets will test your resolve. Over long periods of time, the S&P 500 has historically delivered average annual returns near 10 percent, but meaningful pullbacks along the way are common. Take a guess what many investors do during those drawdowns. Do they buy? Nope. They sell, and it’s often not the best move. They don’t do this because they’re dumb. They do it because they’re emotional.

Research suggests this behavior can impact long-term returns. Morningstar’s long-running “Mind the Gap” study has found that investors often earn less than the funds they invest in, largely because they buy after strong performance and sell during downturns.

The best way to avoid this behavioral trap sounds simple: don’t follow the crowd and resist the illusion that you can outguess the market. In practice, that is much harder to do.

This is where experienced guidance can add real value. An advisor can help take some of the emotion out of investing by providing an objective, steady perspective. We help you stick to your plan and stay disciplined when markets test your resolve. As Warren Buffett put it:

“Much success can be attributed to inactivity. Most investors cannot resist the temptation to constantly buy and sell.”

Sometimes the smartest move is staying put.