Why investors 'always misunderstand' the difficulty of regaining a loss, says advisor

Have a losing investment? You whitethorn request to hold longer than you deliberation to regain that loss.

The reply lies successful elemental arithmetic.

Yet, "investors ever misunderstand this," said Ted Jenkin, a certified fiscal planner based successful Atlanta and a subordinate of CNBC's Financial Advisor Council.

Here's an example: Let's accidental you put $10 successful a stock. Its worth declines to $8 — a 20% loss. The stock's worth past rebounds by 20%.

You mightiness conjecture you've breached adjacent — but you haven't. That 20% summation returns the stock's worth to $9.60, not the archetypal $10.

It would instrumentality a 25% summation to afloat regain the archetypal $2 loss.

This mathematics is "why recovering what you mislaid is truthful hard, due to the fact that you ever person to execute a amended instrumentality than the existent instrumentality you lost," said Jenkin, laminitis and CEO of oXYGen Financial.

Here's a caller real-world example.

The S&P 500 banal scale plummeted successful the aboriginal days of the Covid-19 pandemic. The scale declined from its 3,386.15 closing worth connected Feb. 19, 2020, to 2,237.40 connected March 23, 2020 — a 34% loss.

The scale had recouped its value by Aug. 18 that year, erstwhile it closed astatine 3,389.78 — a 52% summation from the debased constituent successful March.

This is possibly a sobering mathematics acquisition for investors, who thin to consciousness the symptom of a fiscal nonaccomplishment more powerfully than a gain.

But it carries important implications for definite investors, too.

For example, retirees whitethorn opt to retreat a definite stock — say, 3% oregon 4% — of their status accounts each period for income. If those accounts diminution successful worth — meaning income would decline, excessively — it whitethorn instrumentality "much longer than you deliberation to get backmost to your regular income level," Jenkin said.