Struggling to Stay Committed to the Long Term Game of Investing.
Patience. Patience. Patience.
Patience. Patience. Patience. Mindset of a successful investor. I struggle to embody. Before I started investing, I never knew I would flounder so embarrassingly. Thinking to myself, investing is simple — “Buy and Hold” what can be so difficult about that? Yup, please laugh at me 🥲
Never underestimate your mind’s power to convince you to do something you know you shouldn’t.
I am hoping by penning this down I can keep myself in check and keep my itchy fingers busy so I do not succumb to selling my shares to profit for the short term.
This devil in my head is always tempting “Shouldn’t you be taking profits since the market has been kind to you? I mean… you can buy the shares again if you want to, right?”
Honestly, more often than not, buying the shares again does not happen for me. It is so counterintuitive to buy the shares again after profiting about 30%-50% and to enter again around the price I sold it for. How even.
I have read that successful investors are able to continue buying the shares as their prices rise higher (ie. averaging up). They will load up on stocks that are performing in terms of business growth. This serves as a confirmation and makes them feel comfortable allocating a bigger portion of their portfolio towards these winning stocks.
Successful investing has far more to do with how you act than with what you know.
I guess what I lack is experience and confidence in my own analysis of the business that makes me afraid of averaging up. Of course, I look forward to improving on this.
Being a novice investor, I am still navigating through the nuances of this long-term game. What I set out to do is to have 2 separate brokerage accounts. One for shorter-term trades for ephemeral fulfillment to shut the devil up and another for long-term holdings.
This way, I am able to keep my long-term portfolio out of sight, and hopefully out of mind. It reduces the chances of me checking and focusing only on the share price movements.
NOTE TO SELF: By selling your winners early, you are losing out on the unlimited upside potential it has. You will never be rich if you don’t have patience.
If you’re feeling the same way, know that you’re not alone. Or am I the only impatient fool?
P.S. For those that have overcome this, any tip is appreciated.
