Workplace skills doesn't help much in investment

You may be surprised I mention workplace skill? Many readers have carefully read the author’s preface in my book “The Rules of Super Growth Stocks Investing”; ask if I could elaborate what I said: “Many successful skills required for stock market investment, which are just the opposite of the main skills of successful workplace work.”

Table of Contents

Mediocrity in the workplace

If we have been in the workplace for a long time, in order to survive in the workplace, we must compromise with the workplace, which is to become a social animal (Japanese term). For example, in the workplace, you must pay attention to ethics, you must obey your superiors, watch out organization level, and try to figure out what your boss want. In the long run, you will stop thinking. Because the workplace teaches us that the supervisor is always right (no wonder!), the supervisor must know more than us (actually not!).

In order to survive in the workplace and look for peers’ recognition, everyone must spend most of their time socializing with colleagues and maintaining relationships. Year after year, you will be assimilated unconsciously, causing your opinion to match the majority. There is no difference between people, that is, you will be equalized and mediocre, and become a part of the group.

Most of your behaviors and thoughts will be the same as most people (but you don’t have such awareness, this is the important point). And if you are also investing in stocks, of course the stocks you buy will be the same as most people, so your performance can only approach the market at best, and there can be no excess returns.

Even more dangerous is that in order to facilitate things, we must hold countless time-wasting meetings and seek consensus. The market is the result of the consensus of all investors in all markets, but most of the investments will also become the leeks of the stock market because of this; this is one of the reasons why stock mutual funds cannot outperform the market.

Workplace encourages herding phenomenon

Successful workplace viability must be observant, must abandon self, emphasize the consensus of the group and take the company’s interests as the only consideration, cannot show up or highlight self, and sometimes cannot tell the truth (or should not allow to tell the truth). Time will make office workers assimilated by the undocumented rules of the workplace, but no one aware of it. People have inertia, and it is very difficult to change after forming the habit.

This is also one of the reasons why I have always advocated investing as early as possible when you are young; because white paper is highly malleable, the other two reasons are compound interest over time and the cost of failure; for details, please see my other blog article “The advantages of young people investing in stock ? ” This is also one of the main reasons I described in another article on my blog, “Why successful manager usually not a good investor?”

This is also the fundamental reason why the average investor cannot obtain a good return on investment, but the average person is not very willing to listen to this. Because people are socialized animals; moreover, the way of thinking that has been formed over a long period of 20-30 years in the workplace, as well as the habits that have been subtly developed, are extremely difficult to change. The stock market is the playing field suits who can resist basic human nature.

Gregariousness is the root of narrow-mindedness

These are the taboos of becoming a good investor. To become a good investor, you must think independently and have the courage to disagree with others. As I have always advocated: We are investing, not voting. The crowd are always blind, especially in the stock market. Gustave Le Bon pointed out in his psychology masterpiece “The Crowd” a hundred years ago. Gustave Le Bon was one of the first people to identify that groups of people, when clustered together, have a collective unconsciousness.

Concluding remarks

John Templeton reminds investors that “If you buy the same securities everyone else is buying, you will have the same results as everyone else.” American writer Ralph Waldo Emerson said a sobering sentence, which is very suitable as the conclusion of this post “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”

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