Mar

23

TEASER ALERT: I am not about to write what you expect!!

A popular blog site recently posted a story that advocated people to tap their home equity and buy stocks. The link is here or if that link doesn't work, here. 

What I find interesting about this article is that it is being met with universal revulsion judging from the blog comments and other related postings. (Not naming names.) The so-called Pros are saying it's irresponsible, ludicrous, sign of a top, etc. etc. etc. And the so-called pros are also saying that people will get sued for giving this advice. (I have no opinion).

Let's ignore the fact that this column's recommendation was extremely good advice for the past 5, 10, 15, 20, 30, 50 years, and let's also ignore some of the weaker arguments in the story.

I think we should step back and analytically consider that there is actually some merit to the concept (for some people). (Caveat: I am not bullish on stocks).

Imagine the very responsible Mr X who every month took all of his extra income and paid off his mortgage early. He's now about 40 or 50 years old. And he owns no stocks. He owns no bonds. And he has no mortgage. And he's got enough cash to meet any emergency. I can make a very rational argument that Mr. X would be very well served to place a modest mortgage on his home and use the proceeds to acquire some financial assets. Not necessarily all stocks. But definitely some financial assets. There are several underlying arguments in favor of this: But first and foremost is diversification. We know mathematically, over time, diversification is the only free lunch.

So the authors of this controversial blog post got distracted by things like positive carry. And some other not-so-true things. But all of the readers spewed venom. And this reaction may have informative value.

Remember: A home is both a consumption good and a store of wealth. If someone put 100% of their net worth in a single undiversified stock, they are asking for trouble. And a home is really no different in that respect.

anonymous writes: 

I agree 100%.

The negative reaction, it seems, mistakenly seems to argue the case of not selling one's residence to buy stocks (which is clearly not what the author of the original piece advocated). Clearly, if one were to buy a second residence with that same home equity, in the case of agnosticism as to the direction of home prices and equity prices, would their reaction be the same?
 

Leo Jia writes: 

I think it all depends on who Mr X is.

If he is financially skilled (which seems not the case at all in Rocky's description), then maybe OK.

If not, then he should stay at where he is.

Or if he is really tempted, he should first spend a lot of effort in getting the skill. But Mr X should be well advised that he would still have no clue of what that skill is after many years of fooling around.

Do we all believe that investing is an easy job for everyone?

Different from the house, a financial asset is liquid and evidently volatile. Ordinary people can not tolerate the pain when the change of their asset value is vivid and clear. With the benefit of liquidity, the pain would cause them to do a lot of stupid things, which will then burn them out in no time.


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