Investing principle 4: Be patient - think long term

Investing principle 4: Be patient - think long term

One of the great challenges that all investors face is that there is no easy or quick way to investment success. Aesop's fable of the tortoise and the hare is a useful metaphor. You have to use the time on your side – which could be over multiple decades – to capture the returns of the markets effectively, but often slowly. In the short-term, market returns can be disappointing. The longer you can hold for, the more likely the returns you will receive will be at worst survivable, and hopefully far more palatable.  It is time that allows small returns to compound into large differences in outcome for the patient investor. The reality is that markets go up and down with regular monotony.

The figure below shows the returns of the US stock market since 1971. Any investor with a monthly time horizon would be best placed to avoid stocks altogether. A 1-year time frame also gives a lot of room to experience falls. But longer time periods, such as 20 years, has historically given stock markets enough time to cut through the noise and deliver a positive return to investors.

Be patient

If you want to be a good investor, you have to be patient. On your investing journey, you will spend a lot of time going backwards, recovering from the set back and then surging forward again, often in short, sharp bursts of upward market movement.  You just have to stick with it. Remember that you have to be in the markets to capture their returns. Impatient investors tend to lose faith in their investments too quickly, with often painful consequences.