If investing is entertaining, if you're having fun, you're probably not making any money. Good investing is boring.
Interpretation
Successful investing requires discipline and patience rather than excitement and entertainment.
This quote by George Soros highlights the idea that effective investing is not about entertainment or excitement, but rather about careful analysis and a methodical approach. When investing is reduced to a form of entertainment, it often leads to poor decision-making and losses, as the focus shifts from sound strategies to immediate gratification and thrill.
In practice
This quote can be used in a finance seminar to stress the importance of a disciplined approach to investing.
The securitisation of mortgages added a new dimension of systemic risk. Financial engineers claimed they were reducing risks through geographic diversification: in fact they were increasing them by creating an agency problem. The agents were more interested in maximising fee income than in protecting the interests of bondholders. That is the verity that was ignored by regulators and market participants alike.
The collapse of the global marketplace would be a traumatic event with unimaginable consequences. Yet I find it easier to imagine than the continuation of the present regime.
Regulating and taxing marijuana would simultaneously save taxpayers billions of dollars in enforcement and incarceration costs, while providing many billions of dollars in revenue annually.
We are the most powerful nation on earth. No external power, no terrorist organization can defeat us. But we can defeat ourselves by getting caught in a quagmire.
My foundations support people in the country who care about an open society. It's their work that I'm supporting. So it's not me doing it. But I can empower them. I can support them, and I can help them.
The criminalization of marijuana did not prevent marijuana from becoming the most widely used illegal substance in the United States and many other countries. But it did result in extensive costs and negative consequences.
Investors have few spare tires left. Think of the image of a car on a bumpy road to an uncertain destination that has already used up its spare tire. The cash reserves of people have been eaten up by the recent market volatility.
There will always be bull markets followed by bear markets followed by bull markets
Investing isnβt risky; not being in control is risky.
This message (that attempting to beat the market is futile) can never be sold on Wall Street because it is in effect telling stock analysts to drop dead.
Investors must keep in mind that there's a difference between a good company and a good stock. After all, you can buy a good car but pay too much for it.
If nobody can sell mortgage-backed securities based on trillions of dollars of unpayable instruments, there's a lot less risk in the overall system.
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