The Silent Strategy That Outperforms: Doing Absolutely Nothing

Are you better off dead??
No seriously… you might be. At least when it comes to investing.

Fidelity once did a study on all the accounts held at their institution and found that the highest performing ones were owned by people who had either passed away or completely forgotten they had an account in the first place.

So how could that possibly be?

The Case for Doing Nothing

When you dig into it, it actually makes total sense. There are so many things that can go wrong when you're too active in the market. Most of them come down to psychology. We're human. We're emotional. And that makes us terrible investors.

FOMO. Panic selling. Confirmation bias. Recency bias. Loss aversion. Gambler’s fallacy. I could keep going, the list is a mile long. And most people making moves in the market aren't even doing real research… they’re just reacting.

Investing successfully isn’t about being a genius. It’s about being consistent. And often, just staying out of your own way.

The Lesson

The biggest takeaway from all this?

Time in the market > timing the market.

Most people try to time the market. They want to “sell high” and “buy low.” But that means they have to guess twice, once on the way out, and again on the way back in. Being right once is hard. Being right twice? Over and over again? Nearly impossible.

That’s why your focus should be on building a plan, and sticking to it.

• Choose investments that match your goals and risk tolerance.

• Do your research.

• And then… just don’t touch it.

Seriously. Don’t change your whole plan every couple months. Don’t chase the latest hot stock you saw on TikTok. Project what your portfolio can grow to over time at a steady return, and if it’s not enough to meet your goals? The answer isn’t to chase more return. It’s to save more money, start earlier, or adjust your timeline.

How to Actually Stick With It

The best way to pull this off?

Automate it.

This is why 401(k)s and mortgages are often people’s biggest financial wins. Because they happen without you thinking about it. Your 401(k) comes out of your paycheck. You pay your mortgage automatically. And 30 years later? You’ve got a paid-off house or a sizable portfolio.

You can do the exact same thing with a Roth IRA or brokerage account.
Set up auto-deposits when your paycheck hits. Let it run in the background. Don’t overthink it.

Your future self will thank you.

So… What Stock Should You Buy?

Whenever I tell people I’m a financial planner, they love to ask:
“So… what stock should I buy?”

And I get it. It seems like a simple question. But in my head? A thousand questions pop up before I could ever give advice like that.

Because good investing isn’t about finding a magic stock pick. It’s about building a plan that actually works for you, and then not letting emotions or distractions derail it.

If you want help building that kind of plan, the boring, effective, sleep-well-at-night kind, that’s what I do.