How successful investors manage their thoughts, feelings, and behavior
The Investor Mind, used by No-Worry Investors for stock market success, is a personal development journey open to every investor. Your Market Mind is the success secret of No-Worry Investors. For each investor, it is a unique story that develops their investor mind power. Anyone can learn to do it well and enjoy the lifetime benefits of investment success, financial security, and retirement comfort. This guide gives you the background and attitudes needed to understand the process.
There is a no-worry way of managing your investment thoughts, feelings, and behavior. The approach detailed in this article can help you develop and know your stock market self and give you the essential thinking needed to build your successful investor mind.
The article has three parts. In Part I, we begin with an overview of the investor mind which includes the thoughts of a successful investor. From there, we move to Part II and discuss the most significant mental blocks that stop people from becoming successful investors. Avoiding these mind traps is essential for investment success. And finally, in Part III, we bring together the thinking and positive examples of successful investors who use their investor minds.
Links to article sections:
Introduction to the investor mind
Investor mind Part I: Thoughts & attitudes
Investor mind Part II: Mind trap control
- Knowledge – knowing how to invest or not
- Trust – lack confidence or trust in financial industry players
- Cost – surprises and confusion of high, obscured, or hidden costs
- Complexity – confused and intimidated by perplexing investment choices
Investor mind Part III: Managing thoughts, feelings, and behavior
Introduction to the investor mind
Stock markets can be playgrounds for money that build wealth! And the best part of that great news is that you can learn to use the wealth-building power of stock markets as your wealth-building tool. Making that happen begins by knowing yourself well and then learning to fit investing and the wealth-building power of stock markets to your circumstances. By doing that, your financial future will thank you for taking the time and effort to make it happen!
Stock market success is all about you! You can decide if or when you want to be a successful stock market investor and enjoy the benefits of an investor’s life. Like many things, stock market success begins in your head, which means developing knowledge and controlling your feelings. That is important because learning, emotional management, and psychology are essential to investment success.
Taking a flying leap into the stock market is dangerous for your finances. First, learn, then do.
Stock market success is not a leap of faith. Instead, learning to be a successful investor is built on facts and believing in yourself. Start by developing your investor mind and learning how successful investors think, feel, and behave to build your stock market success.
Successful investors learn to manage their emotions and work to develop a mature psychological makeup. That takes effort, but the payoff is enormous and continues for a lifetime of investment returns!
Investor mind and investor thinking bring stock market success
People that have stock market success have a positive relationship with money. That does not mean being obsessed with money but having respect and appreciation for it. Such people want money for what it can do for them as a part of their investor life. And they want to put money to work for their benefit and benefit the people and organizations they need and support.
The best stock market investors see the market and investing as parts of the great social game of life. In that game, markets are places that exchange, influence, and sometimes even control perceptions. And at times, in some markets, perceptions matter far more than facts. Accepting and understanding the vital role of market perceptions puts you well on the way to becoming a stock market success.
A great benefit of being a stock market success is the money it produces!
That money builds financial freedom, which steadily provides:
When well-managed, money contributes to peace of mind and comfort. And the best news of all is that with an investor mind, you can make well-managed money part of your future!
Learn about no-worry investor thoughts, feelings, and behavior to build your investor mind.
Summary points: Your market mind
Investor Mind Part I:
Thoughts and attitudes
Part I of the White Top Investor Mind focuses on developing stock market success as part of the successful investor's life. As part of my mission to make investing accessible to everyone, White Top Investor shares investment knowledge and experience with anyone interested. Stock markets touch the lives of every person, but only people who are aware of this know they can use stock markets to build wealth.
The benefits of an investor's life and success in stock markets are available to anyone who learns how to manage investments well. Doing that begins in your mind and is unique for each person.
Building a better financial future requires you to integrate your growing knowledge about investing well as part of your self-knowledge. That becomes your stock market self that combines your developing expertise, personality, and feelings into your unique wealth-building self.
You can use this article for touring your mind, emotions, investment knowledge, and attitudes. Doing so can help you put together the stock market self that is best for you.
Knowing your stock market self helps you build wealth, and as you grow to understand, you will know when you are ready to manage your investments. Then can you answer the fundamental question, should I manage my own investments?
With an investor mind, build your investor life.
Building your stock market success alone or with professional help
You can learn to manage investments yourself, with the assistance of knowledgeable friends or with the help of a financial professional. A great choice can be getting the help of fee-for-service financial planning professional. A great alternative can be getting help from a financial advisor who does everything for you.
If you seek professional help, as your knowledge and experience grow, you can make investment management changes and choices should you wish to take complete control of your investment decisions.
Improved investment returns are a benefit of increased investment knowledge. That positive outcome applies to both do-it-yourself investors and clients of financial advisors. For those who want to learn to do it themselves, be mindful that it takes time. On the plus side, you can learn at your own pace and take more control of your investments and financial future as you learn more.
Taking complete control of your investment portfolio can produce significant cost savings, which immediately results in an improved bottom line. Eliminating and controlling costs have a huge impact on your investing results. In all cases, good cost control can change financial futures.
Develop your stock market self to build a successful investor life
Know that your stock market self is as unique as you. Like your personality, knowledge, thoughts, feelings, and lifestyle, your stock market self is yours alone. And that combination of attitudes, quirks, and tendencies makes up who you are.
Your approach to what you eat, how you care for your health, and where you live are unique. They are part of you.
In the same way, your stock market self becomes part of that unique you. Investing well opens unlimited financial possibilities for you.
Successful investors embrace who they are. They know, understand, and manage their minds, feelings, and choices. The best don’t bury or deny emotions, they accept and use them as a managed ally.
Know your stock market self for stock market success and an investor life. Learn the no-worry investor thoughts, feelings, and behavior to build your investor mind.
Make your mind and emotions critical partners in your stock market investment success
The best start to stock market success begins by knowing and training your mind and emotions. By building on a foundation of self-awareness, you develop your unique investor mind that can understand, learn from, and follow the thinking and actions of experienced investors.
As your investment knowledge grows, you will feel more in control and show improved investment results. And a better-performing portfolio builds a financial future with more possibilities.
Thoughts to build your investor mind
As your investor mind is very personal so is developing your investment portfolio. Almost like tailored clothing, the design and fit of your investment portfolio must be a comfortable fit for you, and feelings will come into play.
To understand and manage your feelings about investing, accept them as natural and normal. Then you can work to understand and manage them. After all, our feelings about ourselves investing and the market affects everything we do and every decision we make.
We cannot set emotions aside and use only cold reasons when we invest. That is outdated advice from a long-gone era. We humans do not, and cannot, use analytical facts without feeling.
Being a successful investor means accepting there is no escape from our emotions. Wise investors, understand, and manage their feelings. Successful investors produce the best outcomes and better returns in all markets by working with emotions. Investors with well-managed emotions enjoy lifetime investment success.
Emotions have no right or wrong place in the investor life
Learn and think about your emotions, and you will understand feelings have no right or wrong answer. Investment success always means accepting, acknowledging, considering, and dealing with emotions. For investors, this begins with understanding how to use emotions to your advantage.
Successful investors know themselves and learn to be comfortable making money as part of their investor life.When we accept and understand that our emotions are always there, like gravity or air, we can do our best to deal with them. That opens the way to turn them to our advantage.
Well-managed emotions turn our complex feelings into our emotional power ally supporting our stock market success. That means we don't deny emotions but benefit from learning to use them to our advantage. Our understanding and attitude are the keys to managing emotions well.
Develop your investor mind, then seek stock market success
“Until you manage your mind, do not expect to manage money.”
Warren Buffett
Successful investors positively manage their minds. Their behavior, thinking, and varying degrees of support networks are all positive. Successful investors are people who believe, ‘"yes, I can"!
Their thinking is orientated toward success and includes their planning and behavior. They accept the need to work to research, are curious, and are practical. Very importantly, they understand the need to act and take losses from time to time.
No-worry investors build a personal support network that can range from formal to casual. That can be done online, in person, or both. The most successful investors are excellent communicators. They are careful to engage with positive people and actively avoid negative people.
The successful investor mind embraces positive psychology. Psychology, our way of thinking, feeling, and behaving, flows from all parts of our mind. Our minds are brilliant and powerful. We can train, teach and use them! Investors enjoying stock market success do just that!
Successful investors are conscious of their subconscious mind power
Successful investors are aware of their subconscious minds. And because our subconscious mind can help or hurt investment performance, wise investors learn to understand and manage this part of their minds. To do the same, become aware of your subconscious mind's role in your thinking and behavior.
Without management, our subconscious mind can lead us astray when we take action on investments or make decisions. Especially vulnerable are portfolios of ego-driven investors. These are mentally lazy hunch-playing investors that can win with luck but are not using better investment thinking. Most often, such impulsive stock market decisions lose capital.
While we will always take good luck, thinking investors do far better by managing their emotions. Being an informed and thinking investor takes more effort, but that dependably produces better investment outcomes and more bottom line.
Our prime emotions, fight, flight, or lust, begin in our subconscious, which can set us up for a disastrous mistake! When unmanaged, any subconsciously driven investment action can produce a financial disaster!
Awareness of this puts us on notice and helps us avoid ego-controlled mistakes and lazy investing. And that is an excellent start to understanding that most emotionally-driven investment decisions are errors that facts and thinking can prevent.
Subconscious mind power delivers greater stock market success
Our subconscious minds are capable of excellent and beneficial processing. Very often, insights gained from processing facts and feelings involve subconscious mysteries of the mind. So far, scientists have yet to discover how it happens. But we certainly do know it happens and that subconscious processing can be a very effective analytical and processing tool.
Your trained subconscious mind contributes to your stock market success.
Subconscious processing power often pushes the best ideas from deep in our minds up into our conscious minds. As a matter of routine, I use that astounding ability to process investment information and other challenges by sleeping on them. It amazes me that doing so often produces clear, reasonable, practical, and profitable answers!
Our subconscious thoughts can be positive or negative, help us or hurt us. Once we become aware of the subconscious thought, our conscious mind takes control. At least, it should. To make that happen, we take charge and think it through as soon as we become aware of another subconscious delivery! We can make the right decision and get the best result by thinking it through. To do that, we need the discipline to think and train our minds to form an excellent and powerful investment tool.
Conscious and subconscious mind power improves the investor life
Thinking investors take conscious action as needed. These investors use their aware, attentive, vigilant, and watchful minds.
Especially when considering an investment, investors first check the facts! Then, if a review of the facts does not provide reasons to go ahead, they stop. That is enough to say no!
By doing that simple check before investing or spending more time considering it, you will quickly pass on many more investments and keep thousands of dollars in your account. Most importantly, you will avoid most poor or mediocre investments, and that will show better overall portfolio results. It also means when we find any investment we can say yes to, it will more likely be a good one.
Successful investors have positive thoughts about themselves and their investment actions. Like all people who learn and grow, they steadily increase their factual and emotional awareness. That has the benefit of increasing their understanding of themselves and the world. As a result, they combine understanding emotions and their mental outlook with the mechanics and knowledge of investing. All no-worry investors learn, use, and profit from these essential skills.
When you do the same and use a positive thinking process, you can continually increase the strength of your mind. And your prosperity grows as more experience and awareness generate more opportunities and better investment results.
The best news, our subconscious and conscious minds learn and grow with training. We develop a no-worry investor edge by knowing and understanding our silent mental processing partner.
Investor self-knowledge has no pass or fail
The process of knowing your stock market self continues through your investor life. Honest and realistic self-knowledge contributes the most to our investment success. And like other self-knowledge, there is no pass or fail.
You spend a lifetime with yourself, so you have every opportunity to make it work well for you. Thinking about oneself can comfortably begin by thinking of our strengths. Then we must deal with our weaknesses. And we must be able to know and manage our tendencies. That combination of knowledge and self-awareness provides investors with a great advantage.
As we develop more self-knowledge, we learn to look inside ourselves comfortably. Then, as we progressively grow in knowledge and experience, we benefit from repeating the journey into our minds.
While we never try to be anyone but ourselves, we can learn by looking at the examples and ideas successful investors use. Always work at being the best investor you can be rather than ever thinking you will be like, or a version of, any other investor. Just look at their best and ignore the rest.
The best investors share certain traits, including using facts, not feelings or hunches, to make investment decisions. As a group, the best investors are disciplined but flexible thinkers who make and follow their plans. That means they have a researched and developed plan before beginning investing.
Another shared trait of the best investors is their willingness to stay open to new or different thoughts. They are receptive to new or additional information and ideas. While always remaining risk-averse, they adapt and use new ideas. Finally, the best investors always have excellent cost management skills.
Start where you are to build stock market success
As always, we start from where we are, with no excuses allowed. That means starting now, not after something else. Successful investors learn, grow, and prosper by accepting and beginning where they are. But the sooner you start, the sooner you will enjoy success.
Take time to learn about your investor mind.
As you learn more investment knowledge, the changes in your mind and feelings grow into a positive force in your life. With growth, you recognize the wisdom and opportunity of accepting risk. As a result of taking a risk, you start understanding how to manage risk, which can significantly increase portfolio performance.
Then, as you know and understand more about investing, you steadily see more significant opportunities that allow you to take informed actions to grow portfolios and change financial futures.
Investor life: an attitude with action equals stock market success
The investor life attitude can make a massive difference to your financial future. Similar to learning how to care for your health or safety when traveling and learning the skills of your work or profession, you can learn the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of no-worry way investors to make a substantial difference to your financial future.
To care for your financial future, apply the invest-for-life attitude of a no-worry investor. Invest-for-life applied to stock market investing keeps you interested and growing in returns and knowledge. That gives you the best way to build financial strength now and for your future.
Always use strict cost controls and invest in a base of income-producing stocks for the most significant long-term returns. Use White Top Investor lessons to learn. Then apply what you know; as you grow in skill and experience, your stock market wisdom and financial success will increase.
Thoughts, feelings, and behavior managed for stock market success
When you know your stock market self, your thoughts, feelings, and behavior continue developing your investor mind. The combination of knowledge and attitudes becomes your stock market self and your investor mind giving you a decisive investing advantage as you seek stock market success.
Summary points Part I:
Thoughts and attitudes
Investor Mind Part II:
Mind trap control
Part II of the Investor Mind discusses mind traps, or mental blocks, that prevent many people from becoming successful investors.
The investor mind must understand and know how to overcome investment mind traps. Learning to overcome mental blocks helps improve our self-management, so our reactions, traits, and choices are part of our investor mind.
Successful investors avoid or overcome mind traps by knowing and learning how to manage them. If not controlled, mind traps can use the power of fear to eliminate any hope of successful investing. A scared person will never become a good investor. That's the bad news.
Successful investors learn how investing works before they do it.
Now the good news, knowledge can overcome each mind trap. Use White Top Investor thinking and lessons to learn and know how to clear each mind trap. By removing the mind traps, you can open a path to stock market investment success.
Four investor mind traps stand out
Four mind traps below stand out as the cause of severe damage to financial futures. The most talked about mind traps are:
1. Knowledge – knowing little or nothing about how to invest
2. Trust – lack of confidence or trust in financial industry players
3. Cost – high, hidden, confusing, or obscured costs of financial products
4. Complicated – confused/intimidated by complex investment choices
Investing mind trap 1: Knowledge
Many people offer this excuse for not investing,
“I don’t know how to invest!”
For most non-investors, lack of investing knowledge ranks first on the mind trap list. Not knowing how to invest raises fear, anxiety, and wariness that evaporates any hope of making successful investments. That’s understandable, especially as your money is in the mix! For investors without knowledge or experience, investing can be confusing and intimidating.
But with basic stock market information, we can clarify investment confusion by becoming informed investors. Knowing the facts and how to invest helps you become comfortable. As a bonus, learning investing basics can open your way to a better financial future for you and your family.
Learn before seeking stock market investment success
To begin, don't start by depositing your money. First, learn to understand how investors can get good results. Once you understand how investments work, you are ready to lay out a plan.
By researching and building your investment plan, you can develop knowledge and confidence without risking capital. Making your education as an investor your first investment will lay the foundation for a wealth-building life that can change your future.
By building your basic investing knowledge, you also remove the first mind trap to investing success. The sooner you begin, the better for your financial future.
But, never worry about missing out on the stock market or any investment. The stock market will be there when you are ready.
Procrastination will postpone your success and financial security but do take the time to learn before investing. The future is here; no matter your age, your retirement is touched by what you do with your money today. All financial actions you take today will impact your future and your retirement comfort. Your best move is to start learning now and, with a little effort, start to build a better financial future.
White Top Investor lessons help guide you through the investing basics and help you get ready to put money to work for you.
Investing mind trap 2: Trust
As in all parts of life, trust is a big deal in finances and investing. The massive issue of trust ranks second on the mind trap list. Many people have various reasons to distrust the financial industry, which includes banks and investment advisors.
Financial communications confuse and make anxious investors worry.
Amazingly, public and client trust in the financial industry is a perpetual issue, with about half the population distrusting financial companies. Investors trace the multiple reasons to the following:
Volatility – market gyrations and turbulence alarm many investors
Communication Veil – aloof, outdated, tone-deaf financial messaging
Standards – client safety, suitability, or a fiduciary conflict
A lot of confusion, anxiety, and hostility can be due to poor communication. But the outcome is real; many people have no or limited trust in financial companies. Thank goodness knowledge, and good information can make up the needed difference.
White Top Investor has no interest in criticizing financial service providers. Still, it is helpful to know the darker truth that some financial service strategies and policies are not in the public interest. Wise, informed investors must be aware of these issues. Most, but not all, financial service companies provide fitting, valuable services to clients.
Next, we discuss these trust issues and solutions one by one to help no-worry investors build their investor minds for investment success.
Volatility and the investor mind
Stock market volatility often produces jitters and discomfort for people new to investing. As a result, market volatility can contribute to feelings of distrust because market action can make people feel exposed and vulnerable to financial predators. Learning the basics will help provide background information when dealing with a lack of knowledge. That will help us understand the source of market volatility. Then, once you know the causes, we can discuss how to deal with them.
Basics of investing and trading
Stock market activity includes the continuous interactions of investors and traders. While all are simultaneously active, each has different behavior and effects.
As defined by White Top Investor, investors buy dividend-paying stocks expected to continue reliably paying into the future and growing long-term equity value. They hold those investments for as long as the dividend-paying basics remain. Those long-term holds mean patient investors do not need to trade often.
Traders want to make more money by riding price movements up or down! The sooner, the better. They want action but have limited interest in dividends.
So, when markets are rising, traders buy and are intending to sell later at a higher price for a profit. Or in down markets, traders sell short to profit when prices fall. They trade often and can hold purchases for a nanosecond or months. A few may hold a position longer. As continuous traders, they generate most of the buy and sell orders and commissions. Traders attract most of the media and financial industry attention.
Speculators are also different from investors and traders. At best, they are the most aggressive traders seeking big profit hits. They accept a high risk of loss to take a chance on spectacular price gains. Significant gains on their winners must also cover their losers or misses.
Their holding period can sometimes be days, but they usually hold for a few weeks or months. Typical speculators trade less often than traders but more frequently than investors.
Some stock market basics
Although investors, traders, and speculators buy and sell in the same stock markets, they have different strategies, intentions, and time frames. Short-term trade volume matters, and because traders trade more than investors or speculators, they have the most significant short-term influence on the daily movement of markets.
Trade competition and volumes produce the typical choppy volatility stock market display with many short-term reversals. But as time passes, each asset's market direction and underlying value is steadily asserted as the short-term market influence of traders fade. As more time passes, value has more impact than trade volume. That is when investors see the actual or underlying value of assets.
Successful investors know their stock market basics.
Electronic trading, technology, and cell phones ensure we can trade, seek information, or collect data almost anywhere. But unless you are informed and selective, market noise can quickly overwhelm or distract you. Most market and company data streams are for traders, the media, and the financial industry. That produces a tremendous amount of market trading noise! But very little of the clamor matters to a wise investor who learns to block the noise to prevent it from becoming a distracting mind trap.
Hold for earnings or trade for profit
Investors buy and hold for a long time when they get it right. They seek reliable income and steady capital appreciation. That produces few trades. In contrast, traders are in for a good time, maximum short-term profit, not a long time. Traders want the most profit as fast as possible. That produces many trades.
The investor mind and stock market action
Stock market trading produces a lot of action, but little matters to a wise investor. As investors, we buy and collect dividends and ride as our capital appreciates. We let the market do what it does without much concern. However, we need to monitor and pay attention. You can learn more with White Top Investor lessons.
Investors also need to be aware that many drivers move the economy. They know the stock market is not the economy or the most important economic engine driving it. But it is essential, public, open, and loud! Stock markets and media reports are like an engine without any muffler, ensuring we hear all the stock market noise and know there is lots of action!
Most of the real economy hums along without all the drama. So, when you hear reports of stock market volatility, remember that little of it matters. Do not spend time being concerned about volatility.
Some White Top Investor lessons on stock market trading
Investing, trading, and speculating differ
Trading: an aggressive market play that chases profit
Wise investors must know their sources of financial information
Financial service companies use a vast range of communication strategies to catch attention. Some are unreliable or misleading and well past their best-before date. So wise investors must know their financial and market information sources for their protection and benefit.
As part of their strategy, too many financial service providers dish out aloof, outdated, tone-deaf messaging to keep clients in a fog. That bad strategy is often a clever play on insecurities about money, investing, and the stock market. The intent is to keep prospects insecure about their ability to manage their own money.
The strategies intend to have people surrender their savings by convincing them that only financial service companies can manage money. They want people to leave this complicated stuff to the experts who understand it.
Websites of many financial companies display aloof manipulative communication strategies. Some spout jargon and seem determined to avoid plain, clear disclosure. Such websites offer little practical, meaningful information to individual investors. The financial industry has a high-handed culture known for regular long-winded, self-aggrandizing pronouncements.
As Grandpa may have said, "they use fancy talk" to confuse and trap unwary people.
There are helpful and reliable players; we must be aware that even the leading companies have issues from time to time. We do trust, but we must verify.
Beware! Words build money traps.
Any jargon-filled aloof financial communication is a money trap set to catch you! Messages from too many financial companies intend to keep clients at a disadvantage and at the mercy of the financial company! Clever words try to convince you that only a financial expert can manage your money.
They may try to make you think you lack knowledge and need a market wizard that has the skills and wisdom for stock market success. That would be them and their behind the scenes staff! The intention is to put, and keep, you at a considerable disadvantage and their mercy! Please don't fall for it!
You have the wrong advisor if they make you feel embarrassed or inferior when you meet. Their job includes explaining any information to you in a way you understand!
Not knowing or worrying about money, finances, or investing costs you money. You must know enough about finances and investments to be alert and defend yourself and your money! That applies if you use a professional or learn to manage money and invest yourself.
Don't be afraid to ask for help understanding what you are reading or hearing! Until you know, keep asking questions and insist on getting answers.
You can learn at your pace. Take the step-by-step, no-worry investor approach shared by White Top Investor lessons to understand finances and stock market investing. Not understanding any finance or market issue can be an opportunity. There are answers, and you are not at fault for not knowing complex financial markets.
Suitability vs. fiduciary a pass-fail for investment client safety
- protection for who?
A continuing shame of the financial service industry is that the sector exposes clients to bad advisor risks.
They also fight to set and keep client service and safety obligations low. To do this, they hide their scheme in the reprehensible skullduggery of a communication fog to keep it out of the public spotlight.
As a result, too many clients mistakenly think a reasonable standard of consumer protection shields clients from lousy advice or advisor rip-offs. The protections offered are far less than what most clients realize.
Investors in conflict with, or ripped off by, an advisor quickly learn how alone they are. Even in very egregious cases of abuse, few investors recover their losses.
Financial companies fight tooth and nail to keep the suitable standard to pick profits from client pockets. If obligated to meet a fiduciary standard and operate in the client's best interest, their bottom line would be lower, with the difference going into the client's pockets.
The best possible level of investor protection is to avoid bad advisors by becoming an informed, knowledgeable investor.
Lower financial service standards continue to pick investors' pockets
For financial services, suitability and fiduciary are the two possible regulatory standards. The suitability standard means that any recommendation consistent with the customer's best interest is OK. But advisors operating under that standard can act in their company's interest rather than in the client's best interest. Too often, that plays out with the advisor and their employer doing fine, but the investing client could fare better.
In contrast, the higher fiduciary standard requires that advisers act solely in their client's interest and that advisors cannot allow self-interested deals. That means all recommendations must be in the best interest of the client. It applies even if the client's best interest does not benefit the advisor or employer. The client must always come first.
Naturally, the financial industry pushes the lower suitability standard, which permits them to continue making billions selling products that pay them well but may not be the best for the client. In some cases, products are sold that may not be an overt rip-off but do not fall within the client's objectives or meet the client's profile!
Expect the financial service industry to fight hard for low or meaningless standards. Continuing to insist on a low standard protects the financial sector from abused and ripped-off clients. That seems to be what the financial companies want. As a result, too many investors have paid the price of having their accounts looted by bad advisors.
Learning who to trust for investment advice is part of the wise investor's life
Through good cost controls, investors keep more money available to work for them delivering higher account returns. That is why good cost control is key to stock market success, part of the investor’s life, and central to successful investor thinking. First, last and always, we need consistently strong cost control.
Trust your investor mind and trust that your sources of advice will take time to build. It is a process that takes time to learn. As your knowledge grows, your thinking, attitudes, and feelings change.
With a changed mind, we grow, and while lowering barriers, our confidence builds. It takes time, so be patient with the many small comfortable steps needed to get there. But the great news is that you can progress at your pace. While we want to get underway, remember we have a lifetime to get there.
For the best education or investment results, the more time, the better! As with learning, the earlier you start investing, the greater your lifetime returns. That is why lifetime investors keep growing as they learn and earn more. Start as early as possible to build your investment portfolio and retirement comfort. Once started, keep moving forward by continuing to make regular contributions. You are just paying yourself more and more! Doing that puts you and your future at your best advantage.
This will only happen if you find yourself able and comfortable enough to trust your way forward. To succeed as an investor, you must be able to begin with trust in yourself. So, get any help you need and start by working through any self-trust issues. Learning what is behind trust issues will help you build your confidence. Your financial future will thank you for taking the time and effort.
Investing mind trap 3: Cost
Hidden or obscured costs rank third on the investor mind trap list. Hiding costs from clients has a long financial service history. One result of that shameful behavior is that hidden and obscured fees put off many people, especially when clients discover this shady behavior. That directly contributes to many people's trust issues with the financial service sector. But expect no change. The financial service industry will continue to undermine its credibility by not effectively dealing with this issue.
Regulators who try to force better disclosure of client costs meet the stout resistance of rich, powerful, well-connected financial players who manage to keep well ahead. So, expect obscured and layered costs to remain, especially within many investment funds.
On this issue, progress will continue moving at a glacial pace, just as the industry wants. To deal with it, wise investors learn to carefully research fund costs for both ETF and mutual funds. In the case of many mutual funds, the costs can be atrocious and may include advisor fees, mutual fund management fees, and ETF management fees. But wait, there is more!
When investors sell, some ETF or mutual funds impose an additional exit or trailer fee for a final insult to your pocket. With four layers of cost, is it any wonder the total fees paid can exceed client returns? Unfortunately for investors, these schemes are making your money work, but it is working for the company far more than for you!
Good cost control keeps more money working to deliver higher returns for your account. We must provide good and consistent cost control to enjoy stock market success and an investor's life.
High costs are a one-two hit that lowers stock market success and limits future financial possibilities
In many funds, outdated, embedded commissions and lack of cost transparency hurt investor returns. The industry justifies these high fees as looking out for small investors! But informed investors know small investors would be better off without that advice. The industry justification for double, triple, and quadruple fee dips is nonsense. Do your research and avoid funds with needless sales commissions and fees.
Investors need full, plain, and clear disclosure of fees and costs. Doing that can help investors avoid the pocket picking by hidden financial service fees.By doing your homework before buying, you can avoid obscure fee structures and hidden costs. Do not buy investments or funds with complex, hazy, or impenetrable fee structures, layered costs, or trailer fees. Just say no to them all. There are many lower-cost alternatives without such fees. As a result, investors in those alternatives show much better bottom-line results.
For your money, demand full, plain, and clear disclosure of all costs
Investors need complete, plain, and clear statements that disclose all costs associated with an advisor. To be sure you get that means being willing to leave any advisor that sells a product with layers of fees that are never in the investor's best interest.
Any advisor putting your money in a fund with layered fees or trailer fees is not working in your best interest. None of that client-abusing behavior passes the smell test as suitable for any investor. Regulators need to be more responsive on this issue. Expect that to continue forever, so any resolution is up to the individual investor.
Get all costs in writing to keep advisor costs known and under control. Begin by knowing all costs before opening any account, then get a clear understanding and full disclosure of any ongoing fees. Should any advisor resist or stall putting this information in writing, you are with the wrong advisor. Move to another advisor.
No-worry investors know they must control all their costs. Cost control is essential for stock market success. Many investors are shocked to learn they may be able to eliminate half their fee cost and improve their investment performance by 20% – 100%!
Many have done so! And compounding such a change has a massive impact on your retirement comfort. It’s your money, keep it in your account and working for you!
Investing mind trap 4: Complexity
Markets and financial products can make a complicated mix for investors looking for a way through the maze.
For investors, complications or financial complexity ranks fourth on the investor mind trap list. Complexity can obscure how simple and effective investing can be and confuses and intimidates beginners. Investors need clear explanations of any financial products offered and understand the causes of market noise.
In her hit song, Complicated, Avril Lavigne asks, “Why do you have to go and make things so complicated?” A boy, not financial companies, were on her mind, but the response could have been, “Cuz life’s like this.”
Avril Lavigne's hit, Complicated, is about a boy, not financial matters. But girls, boys, and investors all need good financial plans!
No surprise, similar to people and relationships, markets and financial products can also be complicated. Just add money to any mix, and complications will appear!
New and imaginative financial products are regular additions to the complications of the market. That happens because the steam of new products makes lots of money for the sellers. The sales structure generates vast profits for both financial advisors and their companies. But, clients that buy these products have those fat seller paychecks taken from their portfolios.
Investor plans must be able to deal with financial complications
Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin, and Steve Martin in the movie, It’s Complicated showed us that life, families, and relationships could get complex. Similarly, dealing with the complications in the market needs a plan.
No-worry investors know how to step back and avoid the flood of new investment products. The sales of these products produce fantastic profits, cash flows, and commissions which all go to the house and players. But don't go to investors. In most cases, buyers often only have costs to show for many new financial products.
Meryl Streep starred in the movie, It's Complicated, to entertain us with the complications of dealing with life and relationships. Investors also need to be able to deal with the complications life and markets throw at us.
New financial products are massive money generators for financial companies and their salespeople. However, little of this money goes to the clients. So why participate? Very few new listings meet the White Top Investor test of investment grade. When asked if you should buy a new listing, the correct answer is often, no! Do not buy. There are exceptions, but few initial public offerings pay off for investors.
Trading and speculating action generate much noise and an unending stream of investment market news. In contrast, actual investing activity produces little noise. Investors that learn to make that distinction can tune out most of the trading and media racket.
Take the best and ignore the rest
Want to be an investor with a better-performing portfolio? Pass on all IPOs or new listings. Investors buy only proven performers. Leave the new untested rides for others. For every good one you miss, you will pass on 100s of losers. So let others take the new rides without fearing that you will miss out. And even when IPOs do not fail, most new listings stumble before they get going. Why join the money losers?
To keep finding and riding the winners, keep it simple. But to keep it simple, you need the help of quality information, and most often, that means you need someone to show you around until you get to know your way. The investment scene has many traps and remains complex and confusing until you understand how it works. However, you can understand investing with a bit of time and effort.
The basic lesson? Keeping it simple avoids complexity. The most successful investors learn how to keep it simple because simple works. To make serious amounts of money, investors can use simple financial products. There is no need to get tangled up in complex offerings that work well for financial advisors but not so well for investors.
The White Top Investor approach to investing is straightforward. There is no need for involved, complicated, or convoluted trading strategies. You can be a wealth-builder enjoying growth and diversification with a simple plan that delivers long-term financial security and comfort.
Take a step-by-step no-worry investor approach to investments by growing your knowledge, then investing. Then, persist with a step-by-step learning process to succeed as an investor.
White Top Investor mind trap lessons
White Top Investor has lessons on the mind traps of investing, including the Mind Game series, which discusses the emotional and psychological forces that investors face.
Investors who understand the emotional aspects of investing have an advantage and can achieve better investment results. Investors caught in mind traps impact markets and all other investors. No-worry investors use that knowledge as a doorway to better investment performance.
Investors who understand and pay attention to market psychology will see opportunities when markets change, which can present more overall investment opportunities.
Investors controlling their thoughts, feelings, and behavior can get paid in huge dividends. An example of how the investor mind improves the investor's life.
Summary points Part II mind trap control
Investor Mind Part III: Managing thoughts, feelings, and behavior
“If you cannot control your emotions, you cannot control your money.”
Warren Buffett
You can control your thoughts, feelings, and behavior and manage them to your advantage. Training yourself to do that pays enormous dividends in life. This vital part of the investor's mind integrates you and your stock market self which means you become an investor with a psychological edge.
The best investors have this psychological edge, which is more important than any financial advantage. They understand the importance of managing and not suppressing emotions.
While emotions are not right or wrong, they can be very destructive when misused. Successful people learn to use this principle well. Successful investors make feelings and behavior part of their investor mind and use them as an advantage.
For investors, psychological issues are the single most significant risk to your stock market success. This warning comes with some excellent news! We can learn to manage our emotions.
The five investor mind tour stops:
When walking, cycling, or driving, a wide field of vision helps us see the best way forward and avoid obstruction and collisions. Similarly, a broad understanding of behavior helps investors manage psychological risks. That understanding lets investors see the pathway ahead and opportunities that others miss. As a result, their portfolio performance can show positive results.
This part of the article has more questions than answers. Each question helps you consider and think through a personal psychological issue. By doing so, you can better understand yourself and consider how each psychological issue, your investments, and the process of investing may impact you.
Your thoughts and answers become part of your investor mind
When considering each question, the answers are up to you. It does not matter that they may or may not differ from someone else's answers. What matters is that each response is another of your psychological nuggets. Each is for you to know. These answers become part of your stock market self.
To benefit the most, consider each issue as one part of your investor mind. Does the issue touch you? Explore your response and how your thoughts and feelings cause you to behave. Understanding your reactions to stock market action will help you prepare to develop your stock market self.
People building their investor minds learn the thoughts, feelings, and behavior of no-worry investors as they develop themselves as successful stock market investors.
As your experience managing emotions grows, you develop a unique investor mind. As you do, your answers change. You evolve. That makes your responses to stock market activity part of the experience of your investor mind and contributes to your investing success.
This process becomes your feedback loop and changes as you grow. The growth of your investor mind continues forever as you add to your stock market experience and success. The best news, it produces measurable positive results in your portfolio. The effort pays you well for a lifetime.
Ego behavior
– the most significant challenge
The top psychological risk affects women and men, but more men fall victim to ego-driven behavior that destroys a portfolio. Even someone not driven by a need for control must be aware of this powerful force. It affects many investors and all markets. Awareness of the risk can work to your advantage.
The essential investor question,
"why do this?"
A good check on the power of ego in investing asks the essential question, why?
The answers are between you and your mirror. But they are a part of your need to know your stock market self. Be sure to get the truth out there. It is about you, money, and why you want to learn about stock market investing.
Are you in the stock market to make money and improve your future without the need for outside applause?
Are you building your financial future with no need for someone’s approval?
Ego-driven pride or humble, confident performance?
Investors fit into one of two groups. Proud investor or humble investor. For many, pride plays a role in investment and stock market decisions.
When pride is the motivator, behavior can change. Proud investors are a loud crowd concerned with image, appearance, or what others think. That makes them the "look at me!" people; they can focus on appearing successful, right, and first.
Does that describe you?
If so, acknowledge that to yourself. While pride can be dangerous and cause immense portfolio damage, controlling it is possible.
Humble investors, investors without ego issues, fare far better. They focus on producing returns. The most successful and consistent investors go about collecting gains.
Shouting, “Look at me!” is not a plan or an investment strategy. Ego displays are not in any investing playbook or part of a successful investor mind.
While enjoying the profits, humble investors remain unconcerned about what others think or know about them. While not silent, most are quieter.
A balance of ego and humility gives the best investment performance
Neither ego alone nor complete humility drives most people. Most of us balance the drive, seeking both ego satisfaction and performance. That works well. For stock market success and an investor life, keep a balance and your ego in check.
Is your reason for investing anything other than making money? If so, reconsider. Use the stock market to build a better financial future or find something else to do. Put your money with a financial advisor you can trust. Your money and your financial future will thank you.
A check-up for the investor's ego
Markets and investors do not follow cold logic. For some, that can be a challenging stock market fact to accept.
At times, market behavior makes no sense. But that senseless action often opens the door to investing dangers and opportunities.
Market movements display short-term collective human behavior, and we humans can do bizarre things! An ego-driven person can be determined to do the impossible, and control the market!
Men, more than women, must manage their ego in the stock market. Next to fear, ego produces more stock market emotions and bad decisions than any other reason. Successful investors manage the feelings that drive ego and fear.
Do you accept what the market gives?
Do you think you are smarter than the market?
Are you smart enough to get ahead of the market?
Do you think you always pick the best stocks?
Do you always know what will happen next?
Must you be in charge?
Are you the center of attention?
Do your tendencies affect how you manage investments?
How out of the norm are you?
Can you listen well?
Do you think before acting?
Do you ponder?
Are you overconfident, immune to risk and regret?
Can you keep ego-driven tendencies under control?
Can you manage the emotion?
Better check that ego! Wise investors pay attention and do not fight when the market disagrees. The life of the party should not manage their investments. If ego could be an issue for you, at a minimum, you need the help of a financial professional.
Ego driven trades are high risk and often cause long-term damage
More than investors, traders suffer the curse of ego-driven decisions. To check, look at your trading record. When your records display any frequent trading pattern, consider that as an early warning. If you experience a series of poor trades, STOP! Step back from the market and reassess your investing process. Check for any surplus ego!
When errors or losses happen, successful investors react by analyzing. They find the error, and they see the lesson. They know that most ego-driven and personality-based investment decisions fail. Real investors make decisions by assessing opportunities and risks. When thought through, most investment decisions work well. Thinking investors are the well-paid ones collecting high returns!
Now you know. Your awareness lets you guard against ego-driven mistakes. That puts the control in your hands.
2. Fear, greed and managing the investor mind
Thoughts of danger, pain, or threat will trigger fear. This most potent driver tops the emotional power list. It can change how our bodies work, including our behavior. With knowledge and training, an investor can bring fear under control. This valuable emotion can keep us alive and uninjured when it triggers fleeing, hiding, or freezing. But that behavior can also devastate a portfolio. So, investors need to control their fear.
The investor mind avoids out of control, fear, greed, and other emotions that can take your money.
Out-of-control, fear, greed, and other emotions can be destructive. Emotions can be evil financial spirits that destroy finances. To prevent that, we take control and manage our emotions.
Successful investors manage emotions and turn them into allies. When known, understood, and controlled, emotions provide significant advantages to informed investors. Those investors get better results, use that knowledge, and through every market cycle, deliver dependable returns.
Fearsome power, emotions, and character challenge investors
Fear can freeze thinking, limit success, and stop or prompt wrong actions. It prevents us from doing our best. To manage this powerful force, we must understand and keep fear under control. Learning what drives our fear response gives us a deeper understanding of ourselves.
Do you know your response to fear?
Do you want to run away?
Do you face fear down?
Investors know and manage fear
Consider the positive side of managing fear. Mature investors know, understand, and control fear. It becomes a discipline that spurs them on. For some, the stock market or investing-related fears are significant issues.
Are investing-related fears issues for you?
Take time to reflect and find what you fear in the stock market. Identify why any investment fear is an issue in your mind.
Fear has a trigger. What triggers your fear and its close cousin, anxiety?
Pay attention to understanding what triggers your fear of stock market investing. Selling out and running away in panic is the most damaging fear response to market action. Doing that can wipe out retirement comfort. Learn what to do before you invest. When you know, you will do what you should do. You will avoid panic.
Work through understanding how you are going to deal with fears. Get any help you need. We need fear as a positive discipline force. We use it to keep honest with ourselves. Fear can be a great alert or early warning, not something to fear.
Managing your fear
It wraps back to you. Fear and other emotions always come home. To succeed in a stock market and build your investor mind, you need to manage the activity of your mind. By focusing on investor thinking and managing your investor mind, you set a base or foundation for your stock market success. On that base, you build knowledge of how stock markets work and how to apply effective investment strategies. With that combination, you will know what to do when fear sends an alert.
Fear has a trigger. Pay attention to understanding what that is for your stock market investing. Selling out and running away in panic is the most damaging fear response to market action. Learn before you jump in, and you will know what to do.
Use the White Top Investor lessons to learn about the stock market. Many of those lessons cover various fear scenarios in the stock market. Learning the methods and the how-to specifics can help you.
Experienced investors know the market, and money has no feelings and no concern for the thoughts or feelings of anyone. The market does what it does. There will be no stock market response to our thoughts, logic, hopes, or desires.
The finance industry sells fear but knows we seek safety – know your allies for stock market success
Often, financial industry products and service marketers use fear to sell. An endless list of products exploits our wish to avoid fear. That includes the fear that we will miss out. When sellers use fear to push their product, stop to think. Check that you are making decisions in your best interest.
Fear affects women more than men. That makes it a powerful tool to use against women. Many sellers pick investor pockets using fear. As a result, fear of risk harms women more than men.
There are both financial and emotional risks when dealing with fear. Be a thinking consumer. Know and understand your ability to deal with financial and emotional risks. By becoming knowledgeable investors, we protect ourselves against the worst effects of fear.
We know fear warns us. Use it to do that. Being aware and thinking through investment decisions keeps this powerful force working for and not against us.
Managing greed steadily supports our greater stock market success
“Bulls make money, bears make money, pigs get slaughtered!”
Old Wall Street Maxim
The best investors heed warnings. They avoid greed, impatience, or emotional responses to stock market action. That avoids the greedy pig trap. For stock market success, the best investors learn to manage what the market gives, not what they want to take.
3. Regret teaches unforgettable lessons
Our mental wiring has us programmed to remember bad experiences. A bad experience or loss invites regret for a visit. Regret, one of the best teachers we will ever know can sear unforgettable lessons into our memory!
Usually considered a fair but tough instructor, regret teaches powerful and memorable lessons. But it does not sort the good from the bad. It teaches both!
So, we must learn how to manage the lessons to avoid learning the wrong ones. For investors, that is important. We carefully pick through the lessons provided by our experiences to find the best stock market investing results.
That means we pay attention to what regret teaches, do our homework and think before picking only the best lessons.
After all, even good, solid plans can fail. Even the best method and strategy can miss. We must be sure the lessons of regret do not lead us to poor future decisions. Bad luck and unpleasant surprises happen, but we learn to deal with them and carry on.
Managing regret well adds to your stock market success
We need the ability to put errors and misfortune behind us. So, managing regret lets us sort through the good and bad lessons.
We must not let regret, guilt, or shame stop us from making good decisions. Sometimes life and the stock market surprise us. At times we or others make mistakes. When nasty surprises or mistakes touch us, we deal with them.
Has regret made you miss an opportunity?
Can you deal with it?
Can you shake it off and get over it?
Do you dwell on mistakes?
Can you live with mistakes?
Do you feel bad about making mistakes?
How do you react when you learn there was a better choice?
People unable to leave regret behind and move on should not manage investments. Instead, they should get a trusted financial advisor. We can make regret a valuable ally by thinking through and working our response to regret and the lessons taught.
Bad things happen – successful people accept and move on
We all know that bad things happen! That’s life! Bad choices, bad luck, and sometimes even right decisions produce bad results.
Can you deal with it?
The teaching emotion, regret, sometimes teaches us a lousy lesson! Reviewing and thinking through the choices made can inform us when outcomes are bad. We learn not to repeat bad decisions.
While we want to eliminate wrong choices, we learn to accept that some good options fail. Good decisions with bad results may fit another time. That is part of investing. When it does not work out for you, shake it off!
4. Positive reality and uncertainty
Being realistic and optimistic in an uncertain world and market are facts of the investor life. Accept them as your reality. Investors see and accept the real world. Being realistic relates to the previous point about regret. The mix of our feelings all goes together. While we acknowledge that feelings are part of us, to be successful investors, we need to be aware of but not make feelings our focal point.
As feelings and psychology make us tick, managing them well is vital for our investor mind and stock market success.
To manage our thoughts, feelings, and behavior, we need to accept the world and the stock market as it is. That means taking all of it, including what we do not like or want to change.
Deny denial knowing your stock market self
Accepting how things are, challenges some people. Denial is not a luxury any investor can afford. Avoid it. A person held by denial can do three things.
One, get an honest and trusted critic,
two, change their point of view, or
three, think.
If that does not bring acceptance of reality, get professional help and do not manage your investments.
Managing the get-along, go-along positives of the investor mind
Are you easy to get along with and agreeable?
Or are you a more challenging person?
Are you generous and trusting, or not?
Do you take time for others, or not so much?
Investors do not have a Pollyanna outlook, but they do have a positive attitude. As for cooperation, a simple fact of life, more women are cooperative than men. Men challenge or present difficulties more often to those around them. So, when investing, agreeable people should be more like men. They should take more risks but only those carefully considered.
Of course, the other side is that those inclined to take higher risks should trade more like a woman. That often means fewer trades. Learn to ride the investment, do not be a trader. Remember, time in the market pays far better than timing the market.
Consider the other hand of this approach. If you are more challenging, invest as you do but hold off on the trading. As noted above, ride the investment. Trading costs more than it adds to most portfolios.
Move forward, keep the positives, and toss the negatives. But be aware that building your mental strength helps program your brain for positive results. That enables you to develop new positive habits. Going from thoughts to changed behavior requires an attitude change.
We use our investor mind to manage the get-along or go-along positives and uncertainties of investing.
Managing uncertainty – the good, bad, and disappointing happenings
Managing uncertainty goes against the flow. It may be an unrealistic hope, but we want certainty. When life does not deliver expectations, some react with fear. Some express it as anger.
How do you react when facing uncertain outcomes?
What to do?
To defend against a negative response to uncertainty, think. Consider that we can deal with our natural mental bias. A bit of our ugly self. By realizing that, we can bring it under control and manage our behavior.
Practice making intelligent decisions when faced with uncertainty. Stay positive, and keep to the facts that matter.
In a tumultuous market!
Buy, sell or do nothing?
A tumultuous market will happen and add uncertainty!
When it does, what are you going to do?
Buy, sell, or do nothing?
What are your limitations, strengths, weakness, and tendencies?
To answer, you need to know what type of investor you are. You need to know your stock market self.
There is no correct answer for everyone. But there is a right answer for you. As part of your plan, have this issue locked and loaded.
Managing uncertainty well adds to your stock market success
Stock markets can produce anxious and uncertain moments. Accept it. People who cannot handle some uncertainty should not manage their investments. That applies to people who feel worried and express irritation and concern every day.
Investors need to be aware of both market and world matters. Such matters cause some people concern. People who do not want big-picture awareness should not manage their investments. Only manage your investments if you know that the big picture and details don't get past you.
5. Imagination and details open possibilities
Imagination can be a problem solver and powerful investor ally that drives and converts thoughts into plans for action. To solve problems with imagination, give yourself some mental space. Examine the challenge without considering failure.
How would a 5-year-old solve it?
How about a superhero?
What technology could make it work?
By looking for ways to succeed, you can consider a range of possibilities, allowing you to challenge assumptions. It works best while you are alone and open to inspiration. Or sleeping on it can tap your mental replay and subconscious processing system.
Knowing your stock market self and investor mind requires making changes to your thinking and behavior. It is a case of developing our ability to imagine and consider our mind-affecting reality. Developing your investor mind makes it a tool you create and use.
Managing imagination for stock market success
Being imaginative can make you open to opportunities. But as noted before, all investing requires attention. Get professional help managing your investments if you need more time to pay attention. However, investing well does not have to be close to a full-time job. It can take minutes a day or an hour a week to cover. But it does need consistent and regular attention.
Have you trained your mind to use imagination as an investing tool?
Are you curious, imaginative, and an original thinker?
Do you have an open mind?
Do you control your thoughts or let your imagination free?
The risk for open-minded people is a tendency to go along with an idea. Sometimes that can be a bad idea because most open-minded people need to pay more attention to details. The most successful investors pay attention to details.
When it comes to the stock markets, don't let things happen to you. For yourself and your portfolio, consider investing as a challenge. Manage that challenge to enjoy stock market success.
Being imaginative can make you open to investment opportunities. But as noted before, all investing requires attention. Let a professional help manage your investments if you need more time to pay attention.
Details make better bottom lines and greater stock market success
Are you conscientious?
Do details matter?
Knowing your answers to the questions is the point. There is no right or wrong answer for each question.
The only answer that matters is yours.
Conscientious people mind details.
Usually well-organized and thorough, diligent people make plans that they follow. But, they can be too conservative and avoid reasonable risk, which can be their loss.
The teaching emotion of regret can also challenge the diligent.
Are you patient or nervous?
Do you have risk issues?
Can you handle stress?
Can you take a chance?
Are you a conservative or aggressive investor?
Are you somewhere in between?
If your portfolio drops 10% this month, what would you do?
You can manage investments with minimum time but never with no time. Learn to manage stock market details for the best returns.
As noted above, the point is that there is no correct answer except your answer. You must know your stock market self for your benefit and stock market success.
Your stock market self must know and manage your feelings
Claims of any ability to manage investments with cold, emotionless logic are bogus. Dated macho advice to park your emotions at the door and suppress or deny feelings belongs in the past. To our benefit, both society and psychology made progress.
Only the foolish or naïve deny that emotions have importance. Still, many feelings, tendencies, and attitudes can derail an investor's progress. Instead, learning how to manage feelings keeps investments on track.
For some, a small change in thinking may help. For example, consider the following:
No-worry investors do not hide from or deny the power of emotions.
How large is the portfolio?
What do we own?
What does it pay?
No-worry investors do not deny the power of emotions but consider emotions when making decisions. Psychologists call that the emotional context.
Emotional context is essential in human thinking, feeling, and decision-making. Emotional context connects and affects how we manage investments. Investors who learn and apply this context prosper because they have an edge.
Your brain hooked on emotions
A fundamental psychological fact of life supports the advantage of investors using emotions. The brain requires emotions to make good decisions. Emotions, including confidence, affect effective decision-making and effective decision-making affects investing success.
Knowing your stock market self means you gather and manage facts as an investor. The attributes we consider include emotions. That helps us make the best investing decisions. It becomes part of our process to pick the best investment. Use White Top Investor lessons to learn investing and market psychology details.
Final points to understanding the investor mind
Take the time to be a stock market success. You can manage investments with little time but never with no time. Learn to manage your stock market details for the best returns.
Two traits stand out among most successful investors. First, their interests and reading cover many topics because they enjoy continuous learning. Second, they persist when pursuing their endeavors and goals. They make things happen.
Combining knowledge and effective action helps to make them no-worry investors. Learning and doing make them investment money-makers.
Successful investors have mental and emotional maturity; they plan, follow the plan, and persist.
Personal maturity
Successful investors have mental and emotional maturity. They make a plan, work their plan, persist, and stay the course. Besides knowledge, successful investors have the presence of mind, discipline, and thinking for themselves.
Better investors choose to make beneficial changes
You can change your view of mistakes and failures when you know your stock market self. If needed, record your feelings and how you react. You can manage your response. You can refuse to accept discouragement. Instead, choose change and manage that change.
Investors learn, think, do, review, and repeat
Learning, thinking, doing, reviewing, and repeating are the keys that open the door to stock market success. That simple outline can build your stock market success.
The needed steps start with you. Develop an expert level of self-knowledge. Understand what makes you tick. Make it deep, realistic, and honest self-knowledge.
The doorway to stock market success requires you to learn, think, do, review, and repeat.
Self-knowledge will always be at the center of managing investments well. Your stock market success depends on it. Self-awareness must include knowing and understanding strengths, weaknesses, and tendencies. Finally, it requires you to manage them.
Summary points Part III Managing thoughts, feelings, and behavior
Conclusion:
Make the investor mind yours
Combine the lessons from Parts I, II, and III together with your unique mind, experience, and points of view to create the base of your investor mind. All the mental aspects of investing from that base help you grow and know your stock market self.
The article began with an overview and looked at the White Top Investor mind.
Part I discussed the thoughts and attitudes of the successful investor mind. Apply that thinking to how you approach stock market investing. Blend it into your investor mind.
Then, in Part II, we layered ways to cope with mind traps preventing investment success. To overcome mind traps, we learned knowledge was the key to dealing with these or any other investing mental block. Understanding and applying knowledge were the vital takeaway points.
Finally, we explored successful investor thoughts, feelings, and behavior in Part III. Accepting and using the approach of successful investors provides us with a way to manage investing psychology.
Adopt those attitudes and practices to understand how no-worry investors think, feel and behave. That knowledge sets you up for stock market success and an investor life.
You can be a stock market success. Decide to begin. It takes time and effort to know your stock market self. That effort can deliver huge returns for a lifetime.
To your stock market success
Your investor mind is the unique success power of each no-worry investor. The article helped you explore the relationship between you, your mind, and investing. Touring your mind and emotions helps your thinking, psychology, and attitudes. You become aware of your reactions which builds your investor mind and gives you the insight needed for stock market success.
More useful links:
White Top lessons in reverse chronological order
The White Top Investor about page
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