Controlling Yourself at Your Own Game: You are your own Worst Enemy

If you listen to financial TV, or read most market columnists, you'd think that investing is some kind of sport, or a war, or a struggle for survival in a hostile wilderness.

But investing isn't about beating others at their game.

It's about controlling yourself at your own game.

The challenge for the intelligent investor is not to find the stocks that will go up the most and down the least, but rather to prevent yourself from being your own worst enemy - from buying high just because Mr. Market says "Buy!" and from selling low just because Mr. Market says "Sell!"

If your investment horizon is long - at least 25 or 30 years - there is only one sensible approach: Buy every month, automatically, and whenever else you can spare some money. (For many, the single best choice for this lifelong holding is a total stock-market index fund. )

After all, the whole point of investing is not to earn more money than average, but to earn enough money to meet your own needs. "Who cares? All I know is, my investments earned enough for me to end up in ----?"

The best way to measure your investment success is not by whether you're beating the market but by whether you've put in place a financial plan and a behavioural discipline that are likely to get you where you want to go. In the end, what matters isn't crossing the finish line before anybody else but just making sure that you do cross it.

Ref: cc Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham