Tag Archives: #lows

Wires

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In a one-liner…

…the ‘magic’ formula…

…to crack the market would be to…

…’buy low, sell high’.

Reading this line in a normal mental condition, it is natural for us to say…

…’oh, so simple?!!’

That’s just it.

Cracking Mrs. Market is a ‘simple’ process… … … .

However,…

…the question that screams for our attention is…

…’pray who is in a normal mental condition?’

And the answer is this.

When it counts, almost no one.

When does it count?

At lows and highs.

At lows we are in a frenzy. Panic. ‘Blood’. No one considers buying, even remotely. Those who want to, and would have, are not liquid. Exceptions take the plunge.

At highs, we are exuberant. We know it all. We are the kings. Please don’t tell us to sell. We’re not selling. ‘Hubris’. Those who want to sell, and would have sold, are told irrefutably by family members to forget about even thinking of selling. Exceptions ward off the pressure and make the sale.

We want to be those exceptions.

How do we get there?

It’s about wiring.

Our normal wiring makes us act normally, in a manner where big profits can’t be made.

We need to rewire.

We need to be uncomfortable when markets rise, uncomfortable enough to at least take our principals out. During lows, we need to find comfort in the very idea of entering, thus redeploying our freed-up principals.

How does one rewire?

By being in the market…

…small…

…for long…

…learning to lose small…

…and to win big by letting profits run.

Perhaps very big, over time, by allowing one’s cost-free-ness to remain in the market for a very long hold.

Patience and Nerves Anyone?

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As someone I look up to put it recently – “It’s a game of patience and nerves!”

What is?

The stock-market. 

For whom?

The long-term investor. 

Do you have any?

What?

Patience, or nerves, or both?

You do?

Well, then you’ll do well in the markets, over the long-term. 

We look for complication. Meanwhile, we forget the basics. 

These are basics. 

If you’re not patient, you’ll for example jump into a stock at the wrong time, or you’ll jump out of it too early, or what have you. 

If you don’t have patience, well, develop it. 

If you can’t, do something else instead. Trade. Don’t long-term-invest then. 

If you cannot develop patience, you are not cut out to be a long-term holder. 

One method to cause the tree of patience to grow in you is to create the correct environment. 

Just don’t do anything that will make you jump. 

Invest your sur-sur-plus, money that is then pickled away, money that you won’t miss, yearn for or require over the very long-term. 

Go in with margin of safety. 

Stay in a stock you’ve singled out and entered until there’s a glaring reason to exit. Try to exit upon a high. This is the market. Highs are its nature. So are lows. That means that highs come. Wait for them to come, to exit from anything you need to exit from. 

Nervers, well, they come into play if you’ve not invested with margin of safety. 

I do remember two instances though, where everyone’s nerves were tested. October 2008, and March 2009. At these times, stocks sold for a song. Good ones and bad ones alike. Fear did the rounds, extreme fear. That’s what fear does. It creates once-in-a-lifetime opportunities. Take them. Maintain a clear head. Your nerves of steel will do that for you. Create an environment for your nerves to become strong. Or, perhaps expressed another way, create an environment where any weakness in your nerves is not required to show itself, and gets subdued into extinction. 

How?

Again, just go in with your sur-sur-plus. You’re not going to miss this money even if the sky is falling upon your head. And you’ve gone in with margin of safety. Your nerves will stay intact. 

Ensure your basics. Allow them to shine. 

The rest will take care of itself. 

Good investing. 🙂