In hindsight, is far and away the worst advice I ever got. Why? Because it implicitly presumes that you know when low is low and high is high, which you don’t and can’t. This in turn gives one a stock picking mindset, which is a fools errand for 99% of amateur investors and probably a good percentage of those who consider themselves professionals.
Over the years stock picking has cost me tens of thousands of dollars in either actual losses or paper losses where if I’d hung on for another stretch of time I’d have made a lot more than I did.
The best advice I ever got was to abandon a stock picking mentality and instead to invest in simple index funds, and only the minimum number of those at that.
I talked to a financial advisor through my bank in 2010 after I was looking to try and get better returns than term deposits. they encouraged me to buy into an actively managed fund which turns out had really high fees and I ended up only making around 4% yield – I would have been better off with the term deposits!
In the mid 1980’s, listening to a $6.00/hour security guard tell me what a sure thing investing in commodities on the Chicago Board of Trade was. So I borrowed against my credit card to fund my account and start trading. I consider myself lucky I only lost around $1500, but still a lot of money when you’re working two jobs and paycheck to paycheck. My older self looks back and asks, “what was I thinking?”.
Listening to advice from so-called experts. Listening to so called stock market gurus. Listening to advice from rich people, such as Suzie Orman and those like her. Those who did not get rich from investing, but got rich from giving advice on investing
Buy low, sell high.
In hindsight, is far and away the worst advice I ever got. Why? Because it implicitly presumes that you know when low is low and high is high, which you don’t and can’t. This in turn gives one a stock picking mindset, which is a fools errand for 99% of amateur investors and probably a good percentage of those who consider themselves professionals.
Over the years stock picking has cost me tens of thousands of dollars in either actual losses or paper losses where if I’d hung on for another stretch of time I’d have made a lot more than I did.
The best advice I ever got was to abandon a stock picking mentality and instead to invest in simple index funds, and only the minimum number of those at that.
I talked to a financial advisor through my bank in 2010 after I was looking to try and get better returns than term deposits. they encouraged me to buy into an actively managed fund which turns out had really high fees and I ended up only making around 4% yield – I would have been better off with the term deposits!
In the mid 1980’s, listening to a $6.00/hour security guard tell me what a sure thing investing in commodities on the Chicago Board of Trade was. So I borrowed against my credit card to fund my account and start trading. I consider myself lucky I only lost around $1500, but still a lot of money when you’re working two jobs and paycheck to paycheck. My older self looks back and asks, “what was I thinking?”.
Listening to advice from so-called experts. Listening to so called stock market gurus. Listening to advice from rich people, such as Suzie Orman and those like her. Those who did not get rich from investing, but got rich from giving advice on investing
Buy as much house as you can. Definitely slowed down our financial progress since it left us house poor.