Kevin Ihrke, CFP® | May 15 2026 15:30
Growing up the word discipline conjured up unpleasant visions. You can fill in the blanks from time-outs, getting grounded, losing privileges, you name it.
But those are all consequences. They are the results of a lack of discipline. The positive side is not about consequences. It’s about the rewards for maintaining discipline.
We see it everywhere from maintaining a regular workout schedule to simple things like brushing your teeth every day.
Managing one’s finances can involve a great deal of discipline and this is nowhere less true than managing investments.
I’m writing this in early April, so maybe by the time you read this the world will have settled down a bit. But even if it has, these lessons will always be important. Here’s what I learned during the War with Iran.
Even with decades of experience, my humanity becomes apparent in times like this. I read the same headlines as you, have the fears as you, and when it comes to managing investment portfolios, the same impulses as you.
What President Trump showed me during the recent war was how brutal the mistake is to react to events in real time. It’s clear from watching markets that a great many participants, some with large amounts of money, do exactly that. They sell on bad news and buy on good news. It’s probably the most established way to lose that I can think of and to my mind, this has never been so true as in recent months. If you reacted to headlines, you were selling at low prices and buying at high prices.
So, what do you do?
You could decide that if selling bad news and buying good news has been the wrong thing, then maybe doing the opposite would be the right thing, right? If you tried to do that, be aware that it takes nearly perfect timing to pull it off. That’s not quite impossible, but close to it.
Both of these are reactions to the market and among other things, can be highly emotional. If you’re like many investors, it’s your life savings you’re playing with so maybe 1) you don’t want to play any games, and 2) having your life savings at risk is emotional enough, so maybe you’d like a little less emotion. Here’s how you do it.
- Set up the asset allocation that matches both where you are in your life and what your goals are. CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER® professionals are really good at this. It’s their wheelhouse.
- Once you have your asset allocation, build a portfolio. Think of your asset allocation as your portfolio’s outline. You still need to write the story. That’s where portfolio building comes in.
- Once your plan is in place and your portfolio is built, stick to it. This is the discipline part that we discussed at the beginning and it might be the hardest part of the whole process. There are entire industries aligned against you. The most significant one is what we all interface with, the news media. I don’t care what your information source is, the news media thrives on bad news. They’re in the business of getting you to pay attention and nothing gets attention like bad news. Every day all day long we investors are being told about how bad things are, or how bad they’re going to get.
A few more comments on this last point. No matter what you do, you are at risk. The only difference is how much risk. You might say that if you put your money under your mattress, assuming it’s a safe place and not vulnerable to being stolen, then it’s not at risk, right? Wrong. Cash is at risk of losing purchasing power. Have you noticed the price of gas lately? OK, maybe that’s just temporary, but the car you’re putting that gas into costs a lot more today than it did a decade ago. It almost doesn’t matter what you look at, it costs more to buy today than it did at some point in the past. Cash under the mattress has been losing purchasing power.
For most people, the more you are at risk, the more vulnerable you are to emotions. And you really cannot be emotional in the world of investing.
All of this is where discipline means everything.
You read about the war. What do you do? There’s nothing to think about. You’ve already done it. But the hard part is, sticking to it. And every time things like this happen, you’ll only have trust and hope. I hope it works this time like it has in the past. And this is why having discipline at these times is so hard. Because while you’re being pounded with bad things in your news feed, you also know that just because something usually works doesn’t mean it will work this time. We all know of times when nothing worked. The best we can hope for is that something that has usually worked in the past will work again for us this time. But it might not. And that fact weighs on us.
So, what do you do if you can’t be disciplined? Get a financial professional to manage your investments. Take your emotions out of the equation.
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Hal Masover is a Chartered Retirement Planning Counselor and a registered representative. His firm, Investment Insights, LLC is at 508 N 2nd Street, Suite 203, Fairfield, IA 52556. Securities offered through Cambridge Investment Research, Inc, a Broker/Dealer, Member FINRA/SIPC. Investment Advisor Representative, Cambridge Investment Research Advisors, Inc., a Registered Investment Advisor. Investment Insights, Inc & Cambridge are not affiliated. Comments and questions can be sent to hal@getyourinsight.com. These are the opinions of Hal Masover and not necessarily those of Cambridge, are for informational purposes only, and should not be construed or acted upon as individualized investment advice. Investing involves risk. Depending on the types of investments, there may be varying degrees of risk. Investors should be prepared to bear loss, including total loss of principal. Past performance is no guarantee of future results.