5 Habits that Lead to Successful Investing
Success is not a spontaneous occurrence. While luck can occasionally result in a big payoff, it is not true success but rather a windfall. Long-term success comes only from hard work and the development of winning habits. It requires dedication and discipline.
In this article, we outline five winning habits that lead to successful investing. The world of trading is unforgiving, and those who give in to impulse buying will flame out quickly. To consistently make money in this industry, you need emotional fortitude, an analytical mind, and a willingness to self-reflect.
Although trading and investing are distinct activities, these principles can be applied to both. The good habits you develop as a trader can be easily utilized in the longer timelines of portfolio investing, and vice versa.
Rather than using full sentences for titles, we've labeled each of our top-five investing habits with a single word principle. These are actions but also concepts. Practicing the action alone will be ineffective if you don't understand the concept. The five habits are:
- Research
- Discipline
- Self-reflection
- Correction
- Iteration
Take a moment to memorize these actions and the order in which we have arranged them. It's intentional. This is a duplicatable process and a recipe for success. Think of it as an order of operations. Practice them daily, and you'll develop good investing and trading habits.
Habit #1: Effective Research
Are you relying on trustworthy sources for your information? Relying solely on free sites can leave you vulnerable to advertiser influence and stock promoters. To gain more accurate and unbiased information, consider investing in reputable newsletters like The Economist. When it comes to trading and investing decisions, facts should always trump opinions.
Avoid local newspapers, editorial posts, and stock promoters as they tend to be slanted by political bias or motivated by profit. The key to developing strong research habits is to know where to look for information.
Once you have identified reliable sources, make a daily habit of conducting research at a consistent time, outside of market hours. Avoid getting bogged down with excessive articles when trying to make trades or build a portfolio.
It is also essential to understand what you are searching for. Traders can utilize platforms such as Tickeron to analyze chart patterns, supplemented by data from financial statements or news releases regarding pending annual reports. Remain focused on the facts and disregard the noise.
Investors can benefit from trend analysis or breaking news, provided they apply a filter of objectivity to any potential biases. A glowing review of a particular stock by one of the company's "insiders" is not worth much, whereas an analytical piece from an unbiased financial professional carries more weight.
Habit #2: Practice Discipline
Discipline is defined by Oxford as "the practice of training people to obey rules or a code of behavior," with disobedience being corrected by punishment, which, for investors and traders, translates to losses. Without discipline, making money is unlikely.
Leave emotion at the door. One of the most common mistakes investors make is purchasing a stock based on a "gut feeling" that it will increase in value. If there are no facts to support the feeling, avoid it. Instead, return to Habit #1 and research the company. If the numbers look promising, then make the investment.
Do not mistake innovation for impulse. While fictional heroes use gut instincts to succeed, in real life, such impulses are risky. An innovative idea is excellent, but it is useless for trading without supporting data. How do you obtain that data? Research.
Commit to working specific hours. This is especially true for traders. You may have a poor morning and recover later in the day. Investors do not adhere to such a rigorous schedule, so breaks are acceptable. However, ensure that you devote a set amount of time to your craft.
Establish goals and stick to them. It is critical to have clarity on what you want to accomplish. If you aim to make fifty trades a day, do it. If you want to increase your portfolio holdings by twenty percent this week, make sure it happens. Be disciplined and focused to achieve your objectives.
Habit #3: Self-Reflection
One of the key traits of successful people is their ability to be self-aware and reflective. To cultivate this habit, it's important to practice honest self-evaluation regularly. While mistakes are inevitable, setbacks don't have to be permanent. By viewing them as opportunities to learn and grow, you can turn them into valuable lessons.
To truly achieve success, you need to understand your strengths and weaknesses. Think of this as taking an inventory of yourself. Try doing this at the start and end of each day, and you may discover things about yourself that you weren't aware of before.
It's important to acknowledge your mistakes, but that doesn't mean you should take responsibility for everything that goes wrong. Instead, reflect on your actions and look for areas where you can improve. Avoid blaming others or making excuses, and focus on how you can make things better going forward.
Another important aspect of self-reflection is assessing your emotional state. If you notice a pattern of poor decision-making, take a moment to evaluate your mental and emotional well-being. This is especially important for investors and traders who need to make rational, unemotional decisions.
Finally, remember that you're only human. Everyone has flaws and makes mistakes, so don't be too hard on yourself. In fact, many traders use AI robots to help them stay on track precisely because machines don't make mistakes. By cultivating the habit of self-reflection, you can become more self-aware and better equipped to achieve success in all areas of your life.
Habit #4: Correction
Thomas Edison's quote, "I didn't fail a thousand times. The lightbulb was an invention with a thousand steps," highlights the importance of correction. If Edison had given up after a few attempts, the world might never have known his name. The lesson here is that success and failure are not mutually exclusive. True success often involves learning from multiple failures and correcting course along the way.
To be a successful investor or trader, you must expect to make mistakes and be willing to learn from them. After researching, disciplining yourself to take action, and evaluating your trading day, the next step is to correct your mistakes. It's crucial to ensure that you don't repeat the same mistakes twice.
However, for this step to work effectively, thorough self-reflection in the previous step is necessary. Failing to admit a mistake will only result in repeating the same error over and over again. This is the very definition of insanity. You can't correct something that you refuse to acknowledge.
While you cannot control market volatility or always predict when an uptrend will end, you can focus on what you can control. Don't waste time and energy on things that are beyond your control. Instead, focus on correcting the mistakes that you have made and improving your trading strategy. By doing so, you can increase your chances of success in the long run.
Habit #5: Iteration
Once you have made corrections to any mistakes, it's time to rinse and repeat the process. As we mentioned earlier, this is a continuous process that should be done daily to be successful. Iteration is crucial for investors because it involves repeating successful processes to refine your trading practices and develop a system that works for you.
However, it's important to note that the process of iteration is not simple. The key to success is having the stamina to consistently follow a set process every day without making any impulsive decisions. It's important to avoid tweaking a process before you have evidence to support that decision.
Think of iteration from a data perspective. If you change a variable in a trading pattern, it will distort the data, making it difficult to evaluate the effectiveness of the iteration. Therefore, it's crucial to ensure that your iterations are clean and properly evaluated.
If you invest for fun or are a part-time hobbyist, this article may not be for you. However, if you want to make real money, it's essential to follow the steps outlined in this article. Take the time to experiment, use your gut instincts, and develop a trading strategy that works for you. Remember, successful traders and investors iterate, refine, and repeat the process consistently.
Suggestion: Enhance Your Trading Habits with AI Robots
For investors and traders seeking to overcome their human biases and improve their trading habits, Tickeron's AI application can be a valuable tool. With features that automate research and trading activities, as well as a Paper Trade option for practicing techniques, Tickeron can complement the process we've outlined. Keep in mind that it's not a replacement for the daily exercise of disciplined research, self-reflection, correction, and iteration, but rather a helpful addition to it.
Tickeron’s Approach to Fintech: Artificial Intelligence for Retail Investors
Hedge funds and large institutional investors have been using Artificial Intelligence to analyze large data sets for investment opportunities, and they have also unleashed A.I. on charts to discover patterns and trends. Not only can the A.I. scan thousands of individual securities and cryptocurrencies for patterns and trends, and it generate trade ideas based on what it finds. Hedge funds have had a leg-up on the retail investor for some time now.
Not anymore. Tickeron has launched a new investment platform, and it is designed to give retail investors access to sophisticated AI for a multitude of functions:
Finding stock patterns in the market
Finding trends in the stock market
Testing portfolios to see if they are well-diversified
Back-testing statistics to see how different stock patterns generated trading results
Making Predictions for price movements in the future, with “A.I. Rank” and level of confidence in the trade.
And much more. No longer is AI just confined to the biggest hedge funds in the world. It can now be accessed by everyday investors. Learn how on Tickeron.com.
