The Biggest Mistake Warren Buffett Says to Avoid

Legendary investor Warren Buffett one said, “There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult.”

That’s especially true in investing.

At some point, everyone who starts diving deeper into the investing world hears about options trading, candlestick charts, and tracking resistance and support levels. If that isn’t part of your approach, it’s easy to feel you’re missing something. Even worse, it feels like you are doing something wrong.

Going back to Buffett’s quote, investing is a lot simpler than all of that.

There’s a little bit more to it than what I’m about to share. But, in essence, you just need to do three things:

1. Identify the forces shaping the world, and that will lead you to the best stocks.

2. Invest in those stocks.

3. Give yourself time to hold those stocks to maximize your returns.

It’s true that the first part takes time and research, but the end result is always worth it. We also “fast track” that here at Stock Picker’s Corner (SPC), sharing what we’ve researched for days and weeks and months and condensing it down into issues, updates, reports, and briefings. Once that research is in place, a lot of readers in our free publication and paid research service act on what they see.

The next part, time, is up to each individual investor. But, once again, this can be broken down into part of a simple, yet powerful, plan.

Morgan Housel, a financial writer and investor, has an excellent, easy-to-understand investing resource, his book, Same as Ever: Timeless Lessons on Risk, Opportunity and Living a Good Life.

In his research, he found that the optimal time for holding a position is “probably around 10 years or more.”

Essentially, this shows the longer you hold a stock, you’re increasing your opportunity to earn a positive return. Of course, there will always be exceptions, as everyone eventually picks a bad stock or two and sometimes holds on for too long. But that chart shows that you don’t have to constantly move in and out of stocks and try to time the market.

It’s as simple as that, and anyone can follow that approach, but it can particularly be beneficial to college students and folks just starting their investing journeys. They have a long investing time horizon and can reap massive gains by investing now, adding to their positions, and just letting time work its magic.

Take care,