TRL Blog

IT NEVER CEASED to amaze me when I was a stockbroker that when I would buy the exact same stocks for my clients, some would always make money—and some would never make money.
When brokers find stocks they like, they try to do what is called building a position in the stock—buying lots of it for their clients. For instance, if I liked widget stock, I’d call every single client I had to tell them all about widgets.
Then I’d say: “How many shares would you like, five hundred or one thousand?” I was taught in stockbroker training school never to ask a “yes” or “no” question when trying to make a sale. By asking in an open-ended way whether you want five hundred or one thousand shares, you leave the client only with a choice of how many they want, not whether they want them.
I was a good salesperson, so most of my clients would buy widgets at, let’s say, $85 a share. Now let’s suppose all of a sudden Widget cuts its dividend, and before you know it, the stock is down to $40 a share—and my phone begins ringing off the hook. Some people would invariably say, “Sell, sell, I don’t want to lose more than half my money!” In those cases I had no choice but to sell their stock. Some of my other clients, in for a longer haul, even though they might not have been happy that the stock was down to $40, still knew that this was a good company and that in time it could come back. Often they would buy more shares at the lower price. Before you knew it, widgets were at $120 a share. All of my clients had bought the same stock. Some had made money, and some had lost it. By the way, if you think I’m exaggerating the way stocks move, I’m not. Something very much like this happened with IBM.
It also worked the other way around. Let’s say this time I was building a position in lobster pots, and all my clients bought it at $6 a share; before long, it went up to $12 a share. Big increase. I’d call my clients and some would say, “Okay, sell it,” and others would say, “Let me think about it,” then call back to say, “No, let’s see if it will go a little higher.” All of a sudden something happened and the stock fell, to $4 a share. All the people who didn’t want to sell it at $12 now got frightened and sold at a loss.
Over the years I started to notice that the people who lost money in either of these ways were always the same ones. They’d sell too soon or too late, but they always lost money. In the business, we called them clients with the “kiss of death” when it came to their investments.
It bothered me when my clients lost money, and I began to think more about it. Finally I realized that it wasn’t a matter of luck, but a matter of, well, spirit, for lack of a better word. It was the attitude, the instinct, with which the client went into an investment that helped to determine whether he or she would make money or lose money. Of course there are good investments and bad investments. But however solid the investment, the investor has to be solidly behind his or her investment as well.
I began to see, too, that the questions I had been taught to ask as a broker worked very well for me—I was rich in commissions—but often worked less well for my clients. I changed my approach. I began really talking to my clients about how they felt aout investing in the stock market in the first place. The ones ho invariably lost money said that it made them nervous, that they didn’t like it. I asked them why then they invested in stocks, when there were so many other excellent places to put their money, and their answer changed my life:
“Because you told me to, Suze.” They were trusting me more than they trusted themselves.
From then on, my heart just wasn’t into selling stocks the way it had been. I can date the beginning of my financial advisory practice from the moment I asked my first client, then the second and third, how they felt about buying a stock, rather than asking whether they wanted five hundred or one thousand shares. If there was any hesitation whatsoever, I began to suggest that clients pass. I suggested that they pay attention to that little voice inside them, because what it was selling them was what was right for them to do. Ten years ago I left the corporate brokerage world to start my own firm, where I could really give advice that was good for my clients, not just good for me.

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