Who doesn’t love Disney??

But the Walt Disney Company has been through some tough ups and downs.

When CEO Bob Iger mentioned just a “modest” subscriber reduction for sports giant ESPN in August 2015, he triggered a massive sell-off of the stock.

I was an investor in Disney at the time, so I recall the pain of DIS stock being down 10% in a day.

Instead of just accepting cord-cutting consumers, Iger faced the obstacle head-on and developed Disney’s own streaming service called Disney+.

The bet paid off big time 6 years later, with Disney reporting 113 million subscribers to Disney+.

When you face an obstacle head-on, understand the root problem and focus your energy on the things that are in your power to change, there’s a good chance you will prevail, just like watching any Disney movie with a happy ending.

Today Disney stock is almost double where it was back in 2015.

But did Disney beat the S&P500 (Ticker: SPY) over the same period?

Bottom Line:

1. S&P500 beat DIS by ~ 40% over the 6 year period;

2. Took me a few years to learn that individual stock pickers like me in my former role, couldn’t consistently beat the market. So I faced this challenge heads on, and now advise my clients on #financialplanning and invest my client's wealth in ETFs that track the stock market benchmarks.