If you listen to financial TV or read most market columnist , you had think that investing is some kind of sport or a war or a struggle for survival in a hostile wilderness . But investing isn't about beating others at their game . It's about controlling yourself at your own game .
The challenge for the intelligent investor is not to find the stocks that will go up the most and down the least , but rather to prevent yourself from being your own worst enemy from buying high just because the market says BUY and from selling low just because the market says SELL .
If your investment horizon is long at least 25 or 30 years there is a sensible approach that BUY every month , automatically and whenever else you can spare some money . The single best choice for this lifelong holding is a total stock market index fund . Sell only when you need cash . To be an intelligent investor , you must also refuse to judge your financial success by how a brunch of total strangers are doing .
After all , the whole point of investing is not to earn more money than average , but to earn enough money to meet your own needs . The best way to measure your investing success is not by whether you are beating the market but by whether you have put in place a financial plan and a behavioral discipline that are likely to get you where you want to go . In the end , what matters isn't crossing the finish line before anybody else but just making sure that you do cross it .
0 comments:
Post a Comment