Le vieux du quartier m’a dit : « N’oublie pas que la boussole a été inventée avant l’horloge parce que la direction est plus importante que le temps. »
For those of you who are newbies to the market and did not have the privilege of going through previous corrections and bear markets in 2020 and 2022 or a big correction in early 2025, you may get fearful or nervous as you read the doom and gloom news and see prices falling lower and lower each day.
Fear, doubt, frustration, anxiety could be screwing with your mind now. It’s quite common for new investors to feel this way. Like taking your first plane ride, you may freak out when there is strong turbulence and think your plane will crash.
After going through many more plane rides, you will be calming watching a movie and sipping on a martini. You know the turbulence won’t last and the plane will reach its destination (as long as you sat on a fundamentally good plane with financially strong engines).
I have said this many times ... if you are holding fundamentally good businesses that have wide moats, are generating free cash flow, strong balance sheets and growing, you should have ZERO WORRIES! If you are holding Ponzi like assets with no cash flow, then it’s a different story.
Its during times like these, you must remember what you learnt about INVESTOR PSYCHOLOGY in the Value momentum Investing course and/or Wealth Academy Investors Masterclass. 70% of your success as an investor comes down to your ability to emotional detach from the market price/news and to think rationally.
Remember that in the short term, Mr. Market is like a psychotic drunk. He will get very excited and happy at times and quote you crazy high prices. At other times, he gets depressed and suicidal and quotes you very low prices. The trick is to either ignore Mr Market or take advantage of him. However, never let him influence you. If you get excited when he gets excited and get fearful when he gets fearful then you just as crazy as he is.
FOCUS on the performance of the underlying business and its intrinsic value to determine your success as an investor. Do NOT focus on the short- term price movements in determining how well your investments are doing.
In the short-term, market prices are driven by news, emotions, manipulation by Market makers and High Frequency Algo Robots. You have zero control over where prices go in the short-term. Our job as investors is to recognize when the market price is below the value of high-quality businesses and take advantage it. Use times like these to accumulate larger stakes in high quality companies. Over time, you will be very well rewarded.
For those who get emotionally affected by the " unrealised loss" or lower “realised gains” you see in your account. my suggestion is to NOT LOOK AT IT! or... configure your platform such that you DO NOT SEE the unrealised P/L % . It DOES NOT HELP YOU to see it. If you want to see it, just see it once a year!