Surerera wrote:GS - If it makes you feel any better I've been actively trading both professionally and as a PI for about 40 years and I still make loads of mistakes, but as long as profits are bigger than losses I'll keep going.
Surerera
Worth pausing to ask 'what is a mistake?'
If hindsight is the yardstick then, yes, we all make mistakes in the sense that not all investment decisions will turn out to be profitable. But if the rationale for the decision is sound at the time then should it be viewed as a mistake?
For me mistakes are mostly about poor allocation of capital. It would not have been a mistake to invest in Carillion, it would have been a mistake to invest more than a small fraction of your wealth in Carillion (or any individual share regardless of its subsequent performance).
I'm not sure it's ever a mistake to not invest in something. Missing out on bitcoin is no different than missing out on the myriad other multi-baggers out there at any given time. Always balanced by missing out on equally large (or probably larger) number of failures.
It's a reasonable assumption, certainly based on history that, given sufficient time, profits will be bigger than losses if you obey the most important rule of investing - diversification. I would wager that no-one who has spread their wealth across, and within, the major asset classes over an investment lifetime would now be down, even in inflation-adjusted terms.
BoE