10 Things That Waste an Investor’s Time

We are all flying through life. Busy, busy, busy. Important things to do. So very important. Can't talk, can't stop, can't go, can't come, can't make it, can't do it. Busy. We all have our own reasons. I write an average of six thousand words a day, two hundred and fifty days of the year. That's one point five million words per annum. The average length of a novel is sixty thousands words. I write twenty five novels a year. Excuse me then if I'm a bit too busy to comment on your social media post about the sunset, answer your email survey, or pick up the phone to your stupid call centre. Sorry, but I’ve got a bit going on of my own. We all worry about money, but the truth is that the most precious gift you can give anyone these days, especially your family and kids, is time, and all this technology-driven rushing about that's going on has elevated its value to immeasurable heights. Simply turning up, ringing up, listening, and being there is now the biggest compliment you can ever pay anyone. I remember a story about one of Packer's Birthday guests famously saying, when asked whether they had bought a present for Packer's birthday, "I'm here, that's enough isn't it?" It is. The next time someone turns up on your doorstep, give them a big hug and say "thanks". Time. The most valuable asset on earth, and the most generous of gifts. Use it or lose it. Make it or waste it. When it comes to humans, the uncomfortable truth is that our information interface is not quite as quick as a USB port, and the pathetically inadequate download speeds of our eyes and ears means we have to be very selective about what we bother to personally download, and when it comes to the stock market, there are a lot of downloads that waste your time. And here are some of them, distilled from years of my own personal, wasted time.

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• PowerPoint presentations. PowerPoint has empowered even the most unimaginative, reclusive, bland, but credentialled introverts to present 'well'. It is that good. Which is bad.

• Clickbait. It is so sad. Clickbait journalism has degraded the integrity of financial content, which is now being written for the internet, not for the reader. It’s an insult having to title my article “10 Things That Waste an Investor's Time”, but it is a necessity in a search engine world.

• Broker research. 90% is marketing. 90% of it is designed to promote a corporate client. 90% of it is designed to suck up to a corporate client. It is not independent advice. It is not designed to make the reader money. It is designed to make the broker money. Read it with your eyes open to the corporate purpose.

• AI. You probably haven’t progressed to this realisation yet, but we have. AI is wasting our time. Send me an email written by AI, and not only can I spot it, but it’s an insult. Not to me, but to you. To your intelligence. We’re all going to become acutely aware of it, very quickly. It’s not impressive. It’s a bit pathetic.

• Media talking heads. We may look good and put on a good show, but we have no more ability to predict the future than you do. Take it for what it is, an entertainment, a show. But we are not clairvoyant.

• Anyone injecting urgency into the investment process. There is no rush when it comes to the core purpose of a stock market investor, picking stocks over long periods, not snagging a lucky rise tomorrow. Being urgent has but one destiny in a stock market context.

• Warren Buffett emulation. Sorry, but you are not Warren Buffett, and you cannot do what he does, or someone would be doing it for us, and we would all be billionaires. So stop pretending you can.

• Human emotions. They do nothing for the investment process. Don’t let them get in the way. There is no 'liking' or 'hating' stocks. What you feel about a stock is irrelevant. Think like 'Spock'. Be an algorithm. Dispassionate analysis is the goal. If you have a ‘feeling’ about a stock, you should be removed from your own investment process immediately.

• The price you paid. What you paid for a stock is completely irrelevant. Whether you are in profit or loss has absolutely no bearing on the future share price. So be detached. Take a profit as quickly as you would take a loss, and vice versa. A client once said to me "Telstra owes me five dollars". No it doesn’t, it’s not your brother-in-law.

• Economists and strategists from big institutions. Sorry, but the economists and strategists of the big banks and the big fund managers are all biased to optimism. They have to be. They have a mission, to keep the clients of their large product selling wealth management companies happy and invested. They do that by generating a perception of control and certainty, whilst over-emphasising the market’s relentless rise in the long term. They cannot afford to speak their minds, and they simply cannot tell anybody to sell, ever.

Thanks for taking the time to read this article. Hope it was worth it!   More about the author – Marcus Padley Marcus Padley is a highly-recognised stockbroker and business media personality. He founded Marcus Today Stock Market Newsletter in 1998. The business has built a community of like-minded investors who want to survive and thrive in the stock market. We achieve that through a combination of daily stock market education, ideas and activities.

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