Patience, Faith and Trust - traits you need to develop to succeed - especially in equity investing.

To be honest, I have never been a truly patient person.

In business, I learned to make fast decisions, I learned to evaluate situations, make a decision and then run with it.

I have the faith and trust in myself, that the decision I make, is the most appropriate one based on the information I have at hand. However, if it turns out to be a bad decision, I will deal with it, make the changes required and move on.

My wife and I are the sort of people that look at a situation/challenge in a logical fashion, and come to a decision extremely quickly.

As an example, the last investent property we purchased was a decision made within 30 minutes - and I'm talking from the moment we found out it was available for sale, to looking at the numbers and finally to the moment we made an offer that was accepted.

We just looked at the deal, the numbers made sense and we pulled the trigger on an offer.

However, as I said before, patience really isn't one of my natural strengths.

I have trust in myself and faith in my decisions, but patience? Hmmm, not so much, well at least not until recently anyway!

I do not like getting into queues. Actually, I do not like waiting for anything, and I even have trouble dealing with people that cannot make fast decisions.

I'm a "here and now" kind of person. Always have been and probably always will be.

However, I have discovered that this sort of personality trait is not conducive to investing.

As such, I have had to force myself out of my comfort zone and develop a more patient personality - at least as far as investing goes.

I have been investing in property for 25 years or so, but I have been investing in equities for much less time.

Unlike property, where it is not so easy to buy in and sell out, equities are extremely easy to get in and out of - it can literally be done in seconds. As such, if I bought into a stock and it did not perform as expected, I would get out - often too soon. In fact, I was finding that my stock picks were quite good, but my exit timing was poor due to exiting too soon and not seeing maximising my returns!

I needed to develop patience to see my decision through.

I knew I could see certain market trends, I had faith in my stock picking decisions and trusted my judgement, and over the course of about 12 months, I pushed hard to develop the patience needed for investing in the equities market. I have come a long way since the early days of equity investing, but I'm still continuously working to improve my patience skill.

I have learned that patience is an invaluable skill that is absolutely necessary in equity investing. I have also discovered that trust, conviction and faith in your own ability to make correct decisions, and stick to them, are also necessary traits/skills.

All of these are required for business, property investing and other decision making but even moreso with equities.

In the area of equity investing, everyone has an opinion on everything. There is a lot of external "noise" from friends, relatives, blogs, podcasts, advisors, analysts, magazines, newspapers, media hype etc. It is easy to allow that stuff to get into your head and screw with your decisions. As such, I have found that after analysing/researching a particular area/industry/market, and I decide to pull the trigger on buying into a particular investment, that I must do so with conviction and have and entry and exit strategy.

I make physical notes to remind me of why I decided to buy a particular stock, how I expect it to go and how long I expect to hold it for. If I do not make such notes, then I risk getting out too early and miss the growth and profits that I expected (trust me, I have done this quite a few times before!)

As Warren Buffett said:

"The stock market is designed to transfer money from the active to the patient.”

Since I started developing the skill of patience (it's still a "work in progress"), my profits have improved quite markedly. Patience is a most valuable virtue!

If you need help developing the traits you need (for whatever area you feel you are lacking), then seek help from a professional.

Invest in yourself so you can achieve the success you deserve!