Ferri: Top 10 Times When Not To Invest

Here are some tips when you should just say no to investing.

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Reviewed by: Richard Ferri
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Edited by: Richard Ferri

Oh, how painful it has been to learn these lessons.

I’ve been around the investment industry for a long time and have made plenty of mistakes. I’ve also seen a lot of variations on the theme of investing, some of which have made the industry better and others of which seem like nothing more than elaborate ways to separate investors from their money. The growth in low-cost index investing has certainly been a positive. On the other hand, high-cost and low-quality products are still prolific in the marketplace.

Following is my Top Ten List of When Not to Invest. This list offers a few red flags to warn you when you might be getting sold something you’d best avoid. It’s far from a complete list, but it will help you learn from some of the mistakes I’ve encountered.

10) If you can’t get clear answers to your questions about an investment, don’t buy it.

9) If the risks in an investment are not clear to you, don’t buy it.

8) If the costs to own an investment are not clear to you, don’t buy it.

7) Avoid an investment that is promoted as “no cost to you,” because you’e still paying for it; you just don’t know how, or how much.

6) Be careful about buying investments that you can’t get out of for weeks, months or years.

5) When the words “proprietary,” “private” or “non-traded” are used, think “high-fee” and “illiquid.”

4) Avoid products that are marketed as “smart,” because that’s just smart marketing.

3) Don’t assume that a complex strategy is better than a simple strategy. The only thing extra complexity is likely to add is extra cost.

2) Don’t buy investments from someone who is paid a commission without getting an objective second opinion.

1) Don’t listen to anyone who says low-cost index funds are dangerous. What they probably mean is that index funds are dangerous to their livelihoods.

Charles D. Ellis wrote about making fewer mistakes in his classic book Winning the Loser’s Game. His observation was that winners don’t do anything special; they just make fewer avoidable errors than the losers. In investing, what separates winners from losers is the number of unnecessary mistakes we make.

I’m sure any experienced investor could share his or her own “when not to invest” lessons learned the hard way. We all have battle scars. The trick, as Ellis would agree, is not to incur any more.


For a full list of relevant disclosures, click here. Rick Ferri, founder of Michigan-based Portfolio Solutions, is a widely recognized index investor and the author of several books on index investing.

Richard Ferri, CFA, is founder and managing partner of Portfolio Solutions. He directs the firm's research and education, and is head of the Investment Committee. Ferri writes regularly for the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, the Journal of Financial Planning and his own blog at www.RickFerri.com.