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How to Improve Investment Skills: The Ultimate Secret

Everyone wants to know how to invest better. Make more money. But a lot of people haven’t (yet) got what it takes – hyper performance. If you’re reading this, you might be one of them, and that can change today.

The key to better investment

Oftentimes when people wonder “How to better invest my money”, they expect concrete answers. Track this website, watch these stocks, invest this amount or that amount, and so on and so forth. And that’s certainly what a macroeconomic consultancy like Aitken Advisors will help you with. But one thing that plenty of aspiring investors overlook is actually the fundamental thing for all success, not just investment success.

Do you know what it is? Have a hunch, perhaps?

It’s the one prerequisite for a good approach to just about anything: the right mindset. You can only reach peak performance if you truly commit. Let’s explore a few key points that’ll help you become a better investor.

1. Don’t fixate on the past.

To err is human. You’ve surely made mistakes with investments in the past, but dwelling on them won’t get you anywhere. Rather than constantly thinking about what you could’ve done, focus on what you can do now and in the future. Interestingly, a study by the University of Pennsylvania has revealed that our brains think about future tasks by default.

So, if your brain’s own default state is prospection, why push for retrospection? By doing so, you’re essentially locking yourself in a cage with fear.

Fear is one of the most powerful and, in this case, most inhibiting states of the human mind. It can cloud your vision and judgment. Letting it take over will stop you from taking necessary risks and moving forward.

Instead, go ahead and imagine yourself doing better, reaching peak performance and maximising your investments. The mind’s ability to take you in the right direction is incredibly underrated, so make sure to make the most of it.

As James Aitken likes to say: “Good judgment is usually the result of experience, and experience is frequently the result of bad judgment.”

2. Remember that certainty is an illusion.

One of the main ideas behind Aitken Advisors as a macroeconomic consultancy is narrowing down uncertainty. But narrowing down can never mean completely eliminating. Certainty as such is virtually non-existent. There can only be, as we mentioned above, good judgment, based on tremendous amounts of market data and experience.

In short, be sure to understand that you can never go into a particular investment completely certain that it will be a success. While doubt is an uncomfortable state, there will always be at least 1% of it in any decision you make. What you can do is accept this fact and be prepared, which also brings us to the next point.

3. Always aim to know more.

“If I had one motto, it would be ‘I want to be less wrong.’” That’s one of the things Aitken Advisors’ founder enjoys reiterating frequently. And that’s what investment really boils down to.

The idea is to strive to learn more, know more, be better. When you think about it, it’s in line with both of the previous points.

Firstly, bettering yourself and your investment decisions can only mean going forward, never backward. Secondly, if there’s always more bettering to do, then there definitely is no such thing as certainty or perfection.

4. Create consistency.

The daily habits you create can make or break your path to success. Think of the world’s best tennis players, for example. Do you think they become champions by working hard one day, then lounging the next, and just winging it on the third? Of course not. Federer, for example, follows the exact same steps every time before even hitting a ball.

What that comes down to is that building a routine paves the way for excellence. If you only take huge steps, they’ll be few and far between, having little impact on your strategy success. It’s small changes and tweaks that ultimately lead to peak performance – when done consistently.

Another instance is the way we’re encouraged to learn languages. A little bit of learning every day is set to go a longer way than several hours one day a week.

If you’re looking for an example more relevant to investment, you’re in luck. About two and a half decades ago, there was a huge fund manager who insisted on something many would consider odd or even obsessive. He insisted all his offices around the world be completely identical, the minutest details included.

And what did that help him accomplish? It fed into his routine, his consistency. This meant that he could tick all the essential boxes for better investment skills, no matter which office he entered.

Those boxes would be calmness, focus, confidence, energy and intensity. All these are necessary in order to be anticipatory and remain in control – and that’s something investing can’t do without.

The bottom line

If you’re looking to find out how to improve your investment skills, look no further than yourself. Take a step back and think about these four points above. What can you do to make small changes to your mindset that will bring you incremental gains and significant results? Remember, the path to a peak performance mindset is paved with routine, discipline, constancy and consistency.

If you want a more comprehensive look into how to improve investment skills, make sure to go over to the Library section. There you’ll find the full text this blog’s been based on – “Peak Performance: Ascending the Power Curve” by James Aitken and Dr. Tonya Hoffman.

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Comments to: How to Improve Investment Skills: The Ultimate Secret
  • October 14, 2022

    Thank you. Very interesting.

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