Bloomberg Surveillance · Saturday, September 19, 2026
Alicia Levine, Chief Investment Officer at BNY Wealth, warns that attempting to trade allocations based on headlines or acting like a hedge fund manager is detrimental to long-term wealth building. She emphasizes that wealth is built over decades and that missing even a few of the best trading days can significantly underperform annualized returns.
“I think the biggest mistake that we see, like we're in the wealth business, is wanting to trade the allocations or wanting to swap out all the time because of headlines and essentially trying to pretend that building wealth is the same thing as being a hedge fund manager.”
“That is the biggest mistake. And that is one of our messages that we always talk about, which is wealth is built over decades and that trading actually gives you worse returns than if you did the hypothetical experiment and you missed the five best days of the year or the 10 best days of the year. You underperformed by 5% annualized returns.”
“And in the end, those typically, 100% of the time, tend to be mistakes.”