Two investing quotes and one question to consider on your journey to wealth creation.
“There are hundreds of paths up the mountain, all leading in the same direction, so it doesn’t matter which path you take. The only one wasting time is the one who runs around and around the mountain, telling everyone that his or her path is wrong.”
This is a pretty common task that investors undertake — telling other people that what they’re doing is wrong. Some of the common camps are: the investors who think it’s impossible (nay stupid) to pick individual stocks; daytraders who think that long term holding is an old man’s game. Or, retail investors that believe the path to quick riches are meme stocks and crypto.
There are so many investment philosophies that are being applied daily and many are profitable. It’s best to choose a style that works for you and focus on executing it consistently, continuously crafting the individual parts and ignoring what other people are doing (whether they’re making or losing money doing it). You can’t throw a stone at every dog that barks.
The great thing about investing is that nothing works all the time, every time, because if that were the case markets would be totally efficient and no edges could be found. Don’t envy or demean the path of others.
“Things aren’t good or bad, independent of how they’re perceived.”
The market only does one thing: deliver price from moment to moment – nothing more, nothing less. Everything else is opinion. Whether someone opines that a price is too high, that an asset is trading at a discount or that a trend is overextended, is just an opinion on price delivery.
The interesting thing about market opinions and forecasts is that it’s really hard to be right on a consistent basis. If you look at the track record of people who make forecasts (professionals and amateurs alike). The forecaster who was right once is of almost no value.
The best that we can hope for is to be right on average which is what our Current Portfolio is set up to illustrate – being right about some companies and incorrect about others. Any successful investment portfolio must be able to survive on the bad days.
One Question to Consider:
- How can I diminish my ego more while investing? Am I unfairly judging what other people are doing because they aren’t doing what I think is best?