BRUCE WHITFIELD: Slow and steady wins race at Buffett table
Too many investors in SA second-guess their decisions and, after a year or two of sluggish or even negative returns, are tempted to give up on investing in markets
This week, the JSE moved within a couple of percentage points of record territory - extraordinary when you consider the economy is in serious trouble. It's one of the great dichotomies facing amateur investors. If you invested only when times were good, you would be overpaying for assets, as markets have an uncanny ability to price the future. However, the risk of investing when times are bad is that they can stay bad for longer than you can afford to stay invested. For sensible investors, it's all about time, not timing. The secret of how best to do it was the subject of extensive discussion this weekend in the US's 43rd-largest city, Omaha, Nebraska, where some 40 000 mostly older investors in comfortable shoes and trousers with expandable waistlines gathered to listen to the wisdom of two old guys most investment companies would have put out to pasture decades ago. With all the hype at the World Economic Forum on Africa gathering in Durban this week, you might have missed one of ...
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