The angelic investor
📪 The Optimal Agent Newsletter #049
Take Action:
Bring virtue to your investment portfolio.
Why It Matters:
The same qualities that make you a valuable member of society could make you wealthy. Consider the list of 6 below — and then consider their opposites. What would it be like to reject these virtues (and how might it wreck your portfolio)?
The Angelic Investor:
Consistent: Contributes to investment accounts regularly.
Persistent: Invests when the market is up. Invests when the market is down.
Patient: Understands that strong returns take decades, not month or years.
Disciplined: Has a well-designed asset allocation strategy (and sticks with it).
Calm: Does not react to financial "news".
Humble: Buys diversified, low-cost index funds (and never picks “this year’s winners”).
The Inspiration:
Jason Zweig is a Wall St. Journal columnist, book editor, and the author of The Devil’s Financial Dictionary.
He has made a career of debunking, clarifying, and simplifying investing for the everyday reader — and nearly every word he writes is worth your time.
“Wall Street is, in many ways, a giant obfuscation machine, operated on the principles of making simple ideas complex, safe investments risky, and important facts incomprehensible.”
IPO, abbr. n. “Initial public offering,” or the first sale of a company’s stock by private owners who know everything about it to public buyers who know nothing about it. Marketed to the the outside investors as an opportunity to get in on the ground floor of a growing business, the typical IPO instead presents the greatest opportunity to the insiders who are selling, because the associated hype enables them to cash out at inflated prices. IPO can thus more accurately be said to stand for “insiders’ private opportunity,” “imaginary profits only,” or “it’s probably overpriced.”
BULL, n. A person who believes that an asset will go up in price, a belief often based exclusively on the fact that the person happens to own it.
Explore More:
Listen: O.A. Podcast Episode #49: Doubling Your Net Worth: Concentration, Diversification, Liquidity, & Patience — where Patrick and I break down a listener’s $6 million dollar portfolio, discuss my $5 million dollar “round trip”, and illustrate the rules for getting rich slowly (so you can stay rich forever).
Watch: The YouTube version of O.A. Podcast Ep. 49. I got a haircut, dressed up, and installed a 4k webcam….and Pat broke out an old hoodie. #bumorabillionaire
P.S. Go hug somebody.
