Thrill of the Chase

While everyone keeps their focus on who the next President of the country will be, I have taken it upon myself to escape social media’s abyss and its endless divisiveness to do some fun activities with my kids. One of our favorite things to do is to hunt for treasure. Back in the good old days of January 2020, I received one of the best birthday gifts of my life, a shiny new metal detector. During the lock down in the Spring, we spent many hours scouring the woods around our house, baseball bleachers, rivers, and the local parks looking for buried treasure. We have found a trove of items, and my kids think they are treasures, but ordinary people (including myself) would classify them as junk. Even though we haven’t found anything notable, we still get excited every time the detector makes a beeping noise because the anticipation of possibly finding something special is a compelling emotion.

A real-life treasure was found earlier in the year somewhere in the Rocky Mountains buried by Forrest Fenn around 2010. In a book that he published called The Thrill of the Chase, he included a poem (below) that he claimed contained cryptic clues to a buried treasure said to be worth millions. His story was featured on Destination Unknown in 2015, and reportedly thousands of people embarked into the great outdoors to unearth the treasure. As the years passed and the prize remained hidden, many people started to believe that it didn’t exist and accused Fenn of perpetrating a grand hoax onto the people searching for his “treasure.” Fenn remained adamant that the treasure was real and merely waiting for the right person to find it. Believers remained steadfast in their search, maintaining they would be the ones to unlock the map and located the buried riches. In June of 2020, Fenn confirmed that he had been contacted by an anonymous hunter that provided photographic evidence of the treasure, ending a more than a decade-long debate about its authenticity.

This story reminds me of how different types of investors perceive the stock markets. In our treasure hunting story, many began to believe that it was a clever ruse because it hadn’t been discovered yet, while others still held on to the hope that they might be the ones to crack to code and find untold riches. Like the believers in the Fenn treasure, many investors hold the belief that they can outguess the market if they can pick the right stock, next big trend, best mutual fund, or trade in and out of the market to avoid any losses. The treasure skeptics would be more akin to people who have given up the search for treasure or that recognize that they don’t have a unique talent to predict the future. These investors are content with investing their money into the markets in general via index funds or mutual funds and choose to spend their time pursuing other endeavors that they feel are more rewarding.

For those inclined to seek treasure in the markets, there is good news and bad news here. You can still search for the next big thing, but you must keep in mind that the probability of you succeeding in this endeavor is extremely small. That’s not to say that I think people aren’t smart and capable of doing this. Many other issues enter into the equation that keeps people from doing it successfully and more importantly consistently over the long-term. If it was as easy some pundits, prognosticators, and newsletter writers lead you to believe, we would all have mansions in the Caribbean.

I would never think about quitting my job to pursue hidden treasure with my metal detector, but doing it as a hobby with my family is something that we enjoy. If you want to speculate, make sure that you have a sound financial plan in place just in case you don’t find any treasure.

Nathan Smith is a Portfolio Manager with Rather & Kittrell.