| Time in the Market
The book is "Simple Wealth, Inevitable Wealth" by Nick Murray. It was written before the advent of bitcoin, so it mainly covers investing in stocks, but overall I like the style and strategy the author puts forward.
The most obvious point is that a winning investor picks a strategy and sticks to it, and that time in the market will bear that strategy out. This point is highlighted by the fact that the book and its revision could not have been timed worse.
The first version was written in 1999. I am reading the Third Edition, which again has a forward written on Thanksgiving 2007. It even has these even more poorly time words:
"But by the Fall of 2007 - even amid a significant global credit crisis - the broad U.S. equity market was making new all-time highs."
We all know how that went. In fact, the book and its revision were timed right in the middle of two of the biggest crashes in the past 100 years.
That being said, over time, the S&P 500 index gains over 10% per year. In fact, over the past decade, that's over 14% annually.
The point is this, if one invested in stocks 1999 or 2007, he or she would be deeply disappointed in the short-term returns. But if one held for the past 10 years, one would also have had some of the greatest returns in history. | 