My best friend used to tell me - “Never say ‘I told you so’ to an investor client.” I used to argue that we should use these opportunities to inspire confidence and promote our abilities to make money for clients. I lost the arguments and over time, I have appreciated his wisdom. In investing, “I told you so’s” are major failures. For the past several weeks of the market’s selloff, I have heard far too many smarties telling anyone who will listen about their prior calls for a correction. I am not doubting their claims of prescience because they are usually armed with a time-stamped written publication or audio/video soundbite to verify any claim. But it is amazing to me that people take pride in telling someone else that they were so right and yet no one listened. And that is where the failure comes in. It is far too easy to blog or get quoted, and it is much harder to get people to listen. When we tell people the market, a sector, or a stock is going to go up or down and very few in our audience takes the time to do their own research and take action, we have failed them. So going forward, I am going to stay focused on what I am saying now and what I will say next….not what I said 6 weeks ago. I’ll do my best to make people listen, but you will never hear me say “I told you so.”