Every Investor Needs To Hear This

After a $100,000 finance degree at a private university, helping manage over $5 billion at Goldman Sachs, and over 5 years of working in Finance…

I’ve come across a few hard-hitting investment truths.

Today I’d like to share them with you.

1. A Finance degree will teach you how to invest, but most of it is just complex formulas that only work in theory. Investing in practice is a different beast.

2. The only people who can predict bull markets and bear markets are people who do so in hindsight. Something is always obvious after it happened, but unpredictable before it does.

3. It’s easier to say “be greedy when others are fearful” than it is to actually do it. Human emotions often overpower logic.

4. There are over 10,000 professional asset managers. Statistically, there will be SOME who predict correctly. This doesn’t mean they knew what they were doing, and it doesn’t mean you’ll know which one’s will predict correctly.

5. Take investment advice from people who talk about their mistakes in public. Not people who act like they’ve never lost money.

6. Bear markets are a regular occurrence. On average, they happen every 2-5 years. You’ll probably live through 10+ bear markets in your lifetime. Don’t act surprised when they happen.

7. Commission-free trading has made the stock market more irrational than ever. The barrier to entry has been lowered so much that hedge funds aren’t the only market movers. The price is higher volatility from here on out.

8. When you invest in IPOs, you’re not really buying the IPO. Hedge funds and private investors get to them first. You’re buying their seconds.

9. Great investors aren’t better because of what they know or how they invest. They’re better because they’ve stuck to a strategy and didn’t let their emotions dictate their decisions.

10. If your income is low, how much you earn will be more important than how much you invest. If your income is high, how much you invest is more important.

11. The time period you invested in will have a greater impact on your returns than your investment skill. If you started investing during a crash you will likely have outsized returns (even if you’re a terrible investor).

12. Investing late means you need to invest 2x, 3x, or even 4x more money than if you just started 10-20 years sooner. If you’re still not invested in the market, let this be your sign to start now.

13. How much you make with good investments and how much you lose with bad investments is more important than whether or not your investments are good or bad. It just takes 1 good investment to make a fortune, and it takes 1 bad investment to ruin it.

14. Stocks will rise and fall and the fundamentals can remain the same. This volatility is common when the market is governed by irrationality.

15. You can’t accurately predict oyur risk tolerance if you’ve never lost money investing. Talk is cheap, and experience pays the bills. Losing money feels worse than making money feels good and you need to account for this.

16. If you have credit card debt you shouldn’t be investing. Few people can generate 20%+ guaranteed returns and you and I aren’t one of them.

17. Letting your emotions dictate your investment decisions 1 time can destroy 10 years of good investment decisions. This can be the difference between retiring early and retiring “on time” just like everyone else.

18. Beginner investors are better off hedging against their own mistakes. Experienced investors are better off making great investments. This rarely happens in practice.

19. Everyone’s an expert during a bull market and everyone’s an economist during a recession. Be careful where you get your information from.

20. The stock market doesn’t care if you lost your job, just bought a house, or have a baby on the way. These make up your risk tolerance. Invest with that in mind.