Enjoy the Journey
To be a successful
investor over the long term, you have to enjoy the journey. Be willing to
take up the mantle and enjoy the challenge of investing. If you’re the type
that’s going to lose sleep after the first market dip (or worse yet, if you’re
going to panic out of your well-thought-out investment positions just because
the market falls), then maybe a more passive approach would be better suited
for you. In fact, if you’re not going to enjoy the “game,” you probably
shouldn’t be investing for yourself at all.
With that being said,
there are definite benefits by successfully managing your own investments. While
everybody knows what money can’t buy,
there are obviously things that money can buy: a sense of security, a
comfortable retirement, an ability to provide for your family. And for myself, a sense of empowerment along with the satisfaction of
employing a skill that over time will enable me to enjoy the sweetness of beating the
odds and the belief that “it can’t be done.”
Some people – including the renowned eighteenth-century
economist Adam Smith, believed that when you pursue your own self-interest, the
whole of society benefits. In the stock market, the buying and selling of
stocks creates a market for corporate equity and ultimately provides a vehicle
for productive businesses to raise capital and expand. While true, this kind of
thinking can only go so far. In other words
enjoying the game has to be more than just making money because in the end
making the money is just another way of keeping score.
While to many, “time is money,” it’s probably more universal
to say that “money is time.” After
all, time is the currency of everyone’s life. When it’s spent the game is over.
One of the great benefits of having
money is the ability to pursue those great accomplishments that require the
gifts of time and being. So, while money can’t buy you happiness or even
satisfaction, it might buy you something else. If viewed in the proper light, it can buy you time – the freedom to
pursue the things that you enjoy and that give meaning to life.
Resources
You Can be a Stock
Market Genius
Joel Greenblatt
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