The market's in a funk. Greece is on investors' minds. So here's some good news… in the form of a potential tax deduction and boost for your portfolio.
Read on…
I don't know about you, but I am happy to be on the other side of this week's winter solstice. Short days aren't really my thing — so it's nice to know that the days are getting a little longer from here on.
Yesterday also marked the halfway point between last Christmas and the next one.
The trifecta, of course, is that next Monday marks the end of the financial year. Accountants, market-watchers and — ahem, financial writers — tend to put more focus on June 30 than the rest of the population.
To some degree, that's reasonable — it marks the end of the tax year and most of the companies on the ASX use June 30 as the end of their financial years, too.
But here's what June 30 really means for investors: Nothing.
Well, almost nothing. What June 30 is good for is claiming tax deductions. If you haven't yet subscribed Motley Fool Share Advisor, the market-thumping service I run (as of today, our average return of 51.7% is trouncing the average market return of 20.2%, both including dividends… thanks for asking), what are you waiting for? Click here to get started… NOW
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Market beating returns and the high likelihood of your membership being tax deductible mean it's a no-brainer, and you can claim that deduction as soon as next Tuesday!
Profitable investments and a tax deduction sound like a good combination to me!
A New Financial Year investment strategy
Yes, it's the last day of our planet's one year trip around the sun, but if you think about it, that's every day.
Ah, but we have to pick some date to mark the one year period, so why not June 30? Well, June 30 is as good as any for that purpose, but exactly why does it matter?
Would 364 days be so much less useful? 400? 238? Or, more precisely, exactly what do investors think can be connoted by using such an arbitrary measure?
The average Woolworths shopper doesn't care how much they've spent at Woolies in the last 365 days. Seek's job seekers and employers don't measure their use of the site since last time we were in this celestial position a year ago.
So why on earth would investors mark their returns over such an arbitrary period?
The next few days will bring a slew of reports on what the ASX has done during the 2014/15 financial year. The numbers will be dissected, and 'experts' asked to opine on just why that's happened, and what's in store for the year ahead.
Don't look back
I did a little searching for past headlines. Apparently the 2012/13 year was the 'best in six years', but the 2014 calendar year was the 'worst return since 2011'.
Two questions: First, despite all of the headlines at the time, if I'd have asked you how good the 2013 calendar year was, could you have told me? Secondly, by the time you knew how how bad 2014 was going to end up (i.e. on January 1, 2015), what good does it do you?
And how does it inform your investing? That's right, it doesn't.
We humans tend to love statistics. They're data points that tell us where we are and where we're going. Fair enough. But let's zoom out a bit. Historically, every three years brings one 'down' year and two 'up' years — on average.
Sometimes we have a run of good years, sometimes a run of bad ones. But that statistic tells us nothing about what the next three years will bring — let alone the next year.
So let's, as they say in sports circles, go to the tape. Looking back over long timeframes reminds us that investing in shares has been a very, very profitable decision, indeed. And if you can find great companies and beat the index, it's even more profitable again.
So don't sweat over the end of the financial year. It marks another journey around the sun, and the need for yet another tax return. But in an investing lifetime, one year is as inconsequential as it is arbitrary.
July 1 will be a new financial year. But it'll be just another day in a long-term investing journey.
If you invest accordingly, ignoring the calendar and focussing on finding great value investments — like the ones we continually search for at Motley Fool Share Advisor, — I'm confident you'll reap the benefits.
