Why Investor Behavior Never Changes

“Buy, buy, buy.”

To be a good investor, you need a deep understanding of human psychology and behavior.

The first time I heard about that was when a friend told me to read Poor Charlie’s Almanack in 2015. It’s a book about the investing style of Charlie Munger.

So I bought the book, started reading it, and thought, “What does this have to do with investing?”

I found it very insightful, but at the time I didn’t grasp why the book was mostly about investor behavior.

You’ll find a lot of ideas about what not to do as an investor. You’ll learn about the most common mistakes. But you won’t get a step-by-step program for investing in stocks like Charlie Munger or Warren Buffett.

Since then, I’ve learned that investing is mostly a matter of a deep understanding of human behavior. Just reading a few mainstream books on psychology isn’t enough.

It takes years to learn enough about human behavior to apply it to investing. For me, this understanding only started to come in the past two years.

I must say I’m not the quickest learner or particularly gifted. I was average at best during my educational career. And I learn slowly.