Ottawa investors have faced a lot to worry about lately—rising interest rates, inflation, geopolitical uncertainty, and swinging equity markets. But according to Adam Prittie, a Portfolio Manager and Certified Financial Planner based in Ottawa, the biggest threat to your financial future isn't any of those things. It's you.
"Markets have always been uncertain. That's not new," Prittie writes in a recent column for Ottawa Life Magazine. "What is consistently underestimated is the role our own behaviour plays in shaping investment outcomes over the long term."
Prittie, who holds the CIM and CFP designations along with a BCom, has spent his career watching otherwise rational people make irrational decisions with their money—usually at the worst possible moments. His message is simple but sobering: the gap between what markets return and what investors actually earn is largely a behavioural problem.
The Behaviour Gap
Research in behavioural finance has long documented a phenomenon sometimes called the "behaviour gap"—the difference between an investment's performance and the returns the average investor captures. The culprit is timing. When markets drop, fear triggers selling. When markets surge, greed triggers buying. The result? Investors routinely buy high and sell low, doing the exact opposite of what sound investing demands.
This isn't a matter of intelligence. It's a matter of psychology. Loss aversion, recency bias, overconfidence, and herd mentality are hardwired cognitive tendencies that were useful for human survival but work against wealth-building over time.
What Ottawa Investors Can Do About It
Prittie's advice centres on building a financial plan robust enough to withstand your own emotional reactions—not just market conditions. That means:
Having a written investment policy. When you document your goals, time horizon, and risk tolerance before a market downturn, you give your future self a rational anchor to hold onto when panic sets in.
Automating where possible. Automatic contributions and rebalancing take the emotional decision out of the equation entirely. You can't panic-sell what you haven't touched.
Working with an advisor who coaches behaviour. A good advisor's most valuable service isn't picking stocks—it's keeping clients from making costly emotional decisions, especially in volatile stretches.
Zooming out. Short-term noise dominates headlines and social media feeds, but long-term investors are rarely rewarded for reacting to it. The S&P 500 has recovered from every downturn in history, rewarding those who stayed the course.
The Local Angle
For Ottawa residents—many of whom work in the federal public service or tech sector and are starting to think seriously about retirement—this message carries particular weight. The Ottawa area has seen strong real estate appreciation over the past decade, but concentration risk (having too much wealth in one asset class or sector) is itself a behavioural trap, driven by familiarity bias and local optimism.
Whether you're managing an RRSP, a TFSA, or a non-registered portfolio, Prittie's core point stands: markets will do what markets do. The only variable you can truly control is how you respond to them.
The most powerful investment upgrade you can make this year might not involve picking a new ETF or shuffling your asset allocation. It might simply be getting out of your own way.
Source: Ottawa Life Magazine / Adam Prittie, CIM, CFP, BCOM, Portfolio Manager and Financial Advisor
