Valuable Advice from Jim Rogers

The following is an extract from the recent interview by Investment U with Jim Rogers. He shared with us his valuable experience in trading, which I think is the best advice for any value investor!

Jim Rogers: I would say one lesson we all need to learn is that after you’ve had a great success, you really should be very worried. Let’s say you sell and say you’ve made 10 times on your money. You should be extremely worried. You should close the curtains, not read, look at the TV, or anything because that’s when you’re full of hubris, arrogance, confidence. You think, “God, this is something easy,” and you’re desperate to jump around to something new. You should do your very best to avoid making another play until you’ve calmed down a lot. Just wait. It’s a very dangerous time for any investor.

Likewise, if you take a huge loss and there’s a big panic and things are dumped on your head because you’re overextended or wrong for whatever reason, calm down, don’t say, “I’m never gonna invest in stocks again or commodities or whatever.” That’s the time you really should be willing to invest again if you can gather together some capital money. The investments can be terribly emotional. You have to figure out a way to control your emotions and deal with your emotions if you’re going to survive in these markets.

My advice is that, most of the time, most investors should do nothing. They should look out the window or go to the beach. You should wait until you see money lying in the corner and all you have to do is go over and pick it up. That’s how most investors should invest. The problem is we all think we need to jump around all the time and be jumping in and out and that’s not good.

We think we have to have investments. No, we don’t. If I said you could only have 25 investments in your whole lifetime or if there was some way to limit you to 25, you would be extremely careful. You wouldn’t be jumping around doing all sorts of strange things. Patience is what most investors need to learn. You don’t have to be doing things all the time. Most of the time the best thing is to do nothing. You just sit with what you have as an investment and let it ride or sit and wait until you see someone sitting in the corner.

Most of the time – unless you’re a short-term trader and great at it. I’ve known some spectacular short-term traders. But for most investors, unless you’re one of those guys, then you should just do nothing. Do nothing. If you’re an investor, do nothing except re-examine what you have, and if you’re not investing, just continue to look until you find something.

Happy investing,
Pauline Yong