What can a disputed golf score teach advisers about client behaviour? Andrew Goodwin, co-founder and CEO of Truly Independent, uses a recent Donald Trump headline to explore the importance of managing expectations and helping clients stay focused on the long term.
Donald Trump made headlines recently after claiming to have shot a two-under-par round of 70 to win a tournament at one of his many golf clubs. In a typically gracious assessment of his fellow competitors, he later declared: “It’s called talent. I have it – they don’t!”[1]
Stringing together a 70 at the age of 80 is quite an achievement, to say the least. By way of context, Jack Nicklaus – perhaps the greatest golfer of all time – was once acclaimed for carding a 71 when he was in his mid-70s[2].
As a former club champion myself, I can only describe the President’s alleged feat as astonishing. As the CEO of an adviser firm, meanwhile, I consider it an excellent illustration of why expectation management is so important.
In a way, whether the Commander-in-Chief discreetly kicked a few balls out of the rough while hidden behind a phalanx of Secret Service operatives is neither here nor there. What matters is that his score, however it was assembled, is widely regarded as unbelievable.
This is a perfectly rational reaction. The fact is that octogenarians very rarely – if ever – produce par-beating rounds. By any standard, Trump’s performance represents an anomaly. Incredulity is the natural response.
Yet there’s a tendency to be much less discerning when a comparable phenomenon occurs in the investment world. Aberrations are instead frequently hailed as harbingers of the future. One-offs are treated as new normals.
Imagine, for example, that a particular market enjoys a day of spectacular gains. It doesn’t automatically follow that this stirring trajectory will continue for years, months, weeks or even the ensuing 24 hours.
Equally, imagine that a particular market suffers a day of sizeable losses. It doesn’t automatically follow that the misery will be repeated in depressingly short order, less still that it will endure in perpetuity.
One of the afflictions potentially at play in these instances is recency bias. This is a cognitive error that leads to the extrapolation of short-term events into long-term trends.
Recency bias might persuade investors to plough additional funds into a market that has suddenly performed well. Conversely, it might persuade them to exit a market that has suddenly performed poorly.
The temptation in both cases is to flirt with timing the market rather than spending time in the market. In other words, investors can find it all to easy to act in haste and repent at leisure.
The question for advisers is therefore this: how do we encourage clients to hold their nerve, ignore short-term noise and remain focused on the longer term? This is an especially significant challenge in an era defined by uncertainty and volatility.
In my view, the key lies in sensible expectation management. In turn, the key to sensible expectation management lies in a willingness to pay attention to – and, crucially, to understand – the bigger picture.
My own golfing exploits over the years can help illuminate this argument. The point is that I can get a true sense of how I should expect to play only if I survey the full sweep of several decades’ worth of traipsing the fairways.
Broadly speaking, history tells me my progress has been largely incremental. My scores have reflected a story of gradual improvement. There have been incidents of both outperformance and underperformance, but neither has been sustained.
This means I ought to be satisfied if I shoot 80. I ought to be thrilled if I shoot 70 – matching The Donald’s purported brilliance – but I should acknowledge the accomplishment as a flash in the pan. And I ought to be dismayed if I shoot 90, but I should recognise it doesn’t mean I’m finished in the game.
Similarly, a life-long investment journey is usually about setting practical goals and making steady progress. It’s about being pragmatic. It’s about distinguishing the substantial evidence of consistency from the sporadic bursts of conspicuous variation.
Every such journey features its fair share of highs and lows, little victories and minor setbacks, pleasant surprises and dispiriting blows. But in the end, on balance and when all is said and done, the good stuff is likely to outweigh the bad.
Amid calls to re-educate advisers on the value of long-term thinking and what constitutes a reasonable level of returns for investors, this is the sort of message many clients could appreciate. It might not be as thrilling as a championship-winning birdie blitz, but it’s rather more firmly rooted in reality.
[1] See, for example, Sky Sports: “Donald Trump: US President wins Bedminster Senior Club Championship and taunts opponents in Truth Social post”, August 3 2026 – https://www.skysports.com/golf/news/12176/13569322/donald-trump-us-president-wins-bedminster-senior-club-championship-and-taunts-opponents-in-truth-social-post.
[2] See, for example, CBS: “Jack Nicklaus beats his age by six strokes after shooting a round of 71”, March 16 2017 – https://www.cbssports.com/golf/news/jack-nicklaus-bests-his-age-by-six-strokes-after-shooting-a-round-of-71/.
Main image: golf, robert-ruggiero-U5HMj5J6Opg-unsplash
