Hello and welcome to this month's edition of Investment Insights.
This month, we feature an article over at Fool.com titled " How to Ruin Your Life", a somewhat uninspiring title but nevertheless a great piece about learning lessons from those who have made mistakes. Written by Morgan Housel, he points out that it is easier and more common to be stupid than smart with your money and if you want to get better with money, you should spend more time studying people who have failed rather than those who have succeeded. Whilst all of the items discussed are important, the most telling is in the opening paragraphs. Here he quotes Warren Buffet speaking after a group of Hedge Fund Managers lost everything, "To make money they didn't have and didn't need, they risked what they did have and did need," he said. "And that's foolish. It is just plain foolish. If you risk something that is important to you for something that is unimportant to you, it just does not make any sense."
The four key takeouts from the piece are salient reminders about what you are trying to achieve, long term investing and ignoring the swirling noise of the daily markets. Daniel Minihan, our Director of Wealth Management, has written many pieces on these very topics including this piece discussing how to get clear about what you are trying to achieve, this article looking at long term returns and an "average" investor or this most recent post detailing the harsh reality about trying to beat the market, often a result of listening to the talking heads too often. If you can learn these lessons from the experience of others, you will be well placed to not repeat their mistakes.
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