We need to be careful when we look at markets and not be seduced by the lure of easy money. It’s no secret that markets have done well over the past few years and have netted far above their long-term average return. At a higher price point, it’s difficult to say that these recent returns are replicable in the short term.
As in everything, slow and steady accomplishes the task.
Investing is not a competitive sport. There is nothing to win. No plaque, no trophy, and no cash prize. It’s not a competition. It never was. The media and our nature fooled us into thinking that it was.
As Charles T. Munger said, there is nothing wrong with people getting wealthier faster than you.
Winning in investing is about growing at your pace. Y O U R pace. Nothing else matters.
Investing successfully has 3 major principles not dissimilar to other domains.
Patience to wait for good opportunities.
Discipline to not waver and then invest when the market disagrees.
Experience and learning from previous mistakes.
Taking control of your feelings is essential and doable when you step off the rollercoaster of the news cycle.
Who said you have to speak intelligently about Hormuz, tariffs, base rates, and Argentinian debt?
Who said you need to be conversant about LLMs, agentic workforces, quantum advantage, and crypto?
Precious little of the above will change your fortune, and even if it did, how would it change your happiness?
In the deluge of data the sanest person in the room is the one who curates his/her inputs and chooses how to respond to them.
The market isn’t there to excite you (although making money can be exciting); it’s there to offer you attractive opportunities –
Sometimes frequently, mostly less so.
Investing is also counterintuitive: the greater the activity, the lesser the result.
As the adage says, if you play poker for 30 minutes and haven’t worked out who the sucker is, it’s probably you.
You can choose to play any game you want as long as you are cognizant of the rules and the reason/s you choose to play.
Investing need not be hard, but sometimes we make it so.
Isn’t it time we got back to the basics?
The writer is a research manager in the investment…
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