Are you succeeding with your New Years Resolutions or do you need a boost?

In this episode of Fantastic Female Fridays, Susan talks us through:

– the four key reasons that resolutions fail
– three suggested stock market resolutions you can implement right now
– the one key humble tech tool that can autopilot your way to success

Check out the full session at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W-gEuBw4wk

According to an article in the Journal of Clinical Psychology, 4% of people who had a particular goal but didn’t set any New Years Resolution to address that goal were successful by the same time the next year. Those who did have New Years Resolutions were far more likely to be successful and 46% of them achieved that goal. However, what about those who set New Years Resolutions but weren’t successful?

Personally, I think there are four reasons why people don’t succeed:

  1. The goals are too big and unrealistic
  2. People want the outcome (but not the process to get there)
  3. There isn’t a plan in place to achieve them
  4. The bandwagon can be a slippy place…. and when one falls off it, they may not want to get back on

Therefore, I wanted to really address each of these during the show in the context of the stock market. I suggested three resolutions that may be helpful:

The first relates to getting organized. Set up that trading account. Weed that portfolio of the stocks you no longer want to have. Get your tax affairs in order. However, a really super idea is to set up your portfolio in VectorVest. Go to the “Portfolios” tab, click on “My Portfolios”, select “Create Portfolio” and put everything in there so that you have a lot of information at your fingertips including:

  • A graph of your collective stocks
  • One-click away from analyzing each stock
  • Insightful performance and other reports

The second refers to putting a strategy in place. Perhaps that’s as simple are picking some broad ETFs and matching them with market timing. It could be to rank our watchlists in order of a metric that’s most important to you i.e. Dividend Yield or Growth Rate of Earnings. It could be a Model Portfolio. It could be the Birthday Game. It could be a search that you build entirely from scratch. There are lots of strategies that you can find, but rather than try to find the best one, find one that works for you.

The third point is to commit to your education. Naturally, I would love for more and more and more people to join Fantastic Female Fridays each fortnight on YouTube, so that’s my top suggestion! However, further, than that, there are so many opportunities for learning and development at VectorVest including Trending Thursdays, all of the webinars that take place each week, and of course, the Daily Color Guard Report which is packed with relevant, useful insights.

Now, if we go back and turn the reasons that people don’t succeed at their goals around, we can see that we can be successful because:

  1. The goals are small, punchy, effective, and realistic
  2. The outcome is useful and the process is pleasant
  3. If you put an hour into any one of these efforts weekly, you can make immense progress (and set an alarm as a reminder to help – that’s the humble tech tool that can help immensely)
  4. If you fall off the bandwagon, you can get right back up again but even better, when you get a couple of small successes under your belt, celebrate to build your momentum.

Go for it and see you next time at Fantastic Female Fridays!

–Susan Hayes-Culleton