The Psychology Of Money

P.208 If you want to do better as an investor, the single most powerful thing you can do is increase your time horizon. Time is the most powerful force in investing. It makes little things grow big and big mistakes fade away. It can't neutralize luck and risk, but it pushes results closer towards what people deserve. Become OK with a lot of things going wrong. You can be wrong half the time and still make a fortune, because a small minority of things account for the majority of outcomes.

P.207 Go out of your way to find humility when things are going right and forgiveness/compassion when they go wrong. Because it's never as good or as bad as it looks. The world is big and complex. Luck and risk are both real and hard to identify…Respect the power of luck and risk and you'll have a better chance of focusing on things you can actually control.

P.177 Real optimists don't believe that everything will be great. That's complacency. Optimism is a belief that the odds of a good outcome are in your favor over time, even when there will be setbacks along the way. The simple idea that most people wake up in the morning trying to make things a little better and more productive than wake up looking to cause trouble is the foundation of optimism.

P.168 It is a notion that assets have one rational price in a world where investors have different goals and time horizons. Example: Bubbles. Cisco stock rose 300% in 1999 to $60 per share. If you are a long-turn investor, 60 was the only available price to buy. What you don’t realise is that the traders who were setting the marginal price of the stock were playing a different game than you were. Sixty dollars a share was a reasonable price for the traders, because they planned on selling before the end of the day…

P.169 When investors have different goals and time horizons - and they do in every asset class - prices look ridiculous to one person can make sense to another, because the factors those investors pay attention to are different. Are you day trader? Then the smart price to pay is “who cares”? because you trying to squeeze a few bucks out of whatever happens between now and lunchtime…

P.150 …as a lawyer they face such long working hours that they rarely see their families. So perhaps they take a lower-paying job with flexible hours instead…then they realise that childcare is so expensive that they decide ti be a stay-at-home parent. Many of us wind through life on a similar trajectory.

P.123 History is often used by investors and economists as an unassailable guide to the future. Instead it should be used as a rough guide of what tends to work. Example: practical guide on how to invest, was applicable at the time it was written, but does not seem to work well now (time and conditions changed).

P.108 The world used to be hyper-local. That’s now changed. A hyper-connected world means the talent pool you compete in has gone from hundreds or thousands spannning your own town to millions or billions spanning the globe. This is especially true for jobs that rely on working with your head versus your muscles: teaching, marketing…

P.105 …the value of wealth is relative to what you need. Say you and I have the same net worth. And say you’re a better investor than me. I can earn 8% annual returns and you can earn 12% annual returns. But I am more efficient with my money. In the end I’m getting more benefit from my investing despite lower returns. Having lower expenses means your savings go farther.