저자: BenKnight · 외국인
요약 보기
워런 버핏·레이 달리오의 공통 투자 습관 5가지를 소개한다: 아침에 의도적으로 시작, 원칙 기반 의사결정 프로세스, 투자 기록 남기기, 소음(뉴스·단기 등락) 무시, 장기적 사고. 발표자는 자체 전략(13개 기준 펀더멘털 스크리닝, 사전 설정한 매수·매도 가격, 중기 보유)을 설명하며 감정 배제와 데이터 기반 판단을 강조한다. 특정 자산의 가격 방향 예측은 포함되지 않는다.
다듬은 글
Warren Buffett has compounded wealth at 20% annually for over 60 years. Ray Dalio built the world's largest hedge fund from nothing. And when you look at what these people actually do day-to-day, the habits they show consistently aren't complicated. They're almost embarrassingly simple. Most people looking to invest spend all their time trying to find the right strategies and the secrets.
But the investors who actually build wealth long-term spend their time building the right habits. Because a good strategy followed inconsistently will always lose to a simple strategy followed every single day. Here are the five habits that every serious investor has in common and how I've built each one into the way that I invest.
Habit one, they start their day intentionally. Warren Buffett spends the first few hours of his day reading. He's reading the financial reports, the market news, the the business insiders. He's not sitting there panicking over, you know, what he's seeing on social media. He's not making erratic decisions because of some crazy headline.
No, he's just informing himself of the things that matter to him. Whereas amateur investors, they open up social media, they see the first headline, it's something crazy, and they panic. They jump onto this their stocks, they sell them all quickly, and worry and lose money. So, what Warren Buffett's doing there by making sure he's very informed, only taking in the information that really matters and makes a difference, and then acting logically and calmly is such an underrated way to behave.
Because when you don't let emotions creep into your investing, it's amazing how much better you do. Because emotions and logic do not mix, particularly when money's involved. Now, when it comes to my investing, you won't catch me sitting there reading newspapers all day cuz it's it's just not my style.
However, in the mornings, I make sure I'm making intentional decisions for that day. So, am I going to the gym as soon as I wake up? Am I eating healthy? Have I got my meals planned out? Have I got my day scheduled so that when it is time to do my 5 minutes a day of investing, that's all pre-planned so that I don't miss it and I can just focus on what truly matters.
But having that window of clarity in the mornings has a big impact on me and clearly has a big impact on Warren as well because there will always be something crazy in the news. Always. That's what the news is designed to do. So, as long as you've got a way to just take a step back and view things for what they really are, it will set you on the path to success way earlier than anyone else.
Habit two, they have a process for every decision. Like Ray Dalio, when he's running Bridgewater, all his decision-makings would be based on principles and structures and systems. He's not going to be basing decisions based on how he's feeling that day. And honestly, having a system where your decision-making is purely logic-based and fit within a structure, that is important whether you're investing billions like he is or even if you've got a few thousand to manage.
It matters at every single level there because you do not want your emotions to get into involved in your decision-making because if how you feel is going to dictate your actions, well then a good days are going to maybe go well, but bad days are going to make a really bad negative impact on your investments.
So, you can't let that happen. And you know yourself, anything can make you have a bad day, right? You could have stubbed your toe 10 minutes before. And what, that's then going to affect your investments that day? It doesn't make sense. So, you've got to have a very step-by-step logical approach to every decision.
So, look, here's my investing without a process would look like. You turn your computer to on, you look and think, "Oh, what what do I think I should invest in today? What feels good? What what have I seen in the news right lately?" Great. "Oh, Christmas is coming up, so I'm going to pick Amazon." Terrible strategy, by the way, don't do that.
But you pick Amazon. And then you're like, "Hmm, well, you know what? I'm not having a great day so far. Like, it's raining outside. I'm not feeling my best, feeling a bit sick, you know, I had something dodgy for lunch yesterday. So, you know what? I'm not going to take a risk today, so I'm only going to put a tiny amount into this right now.
But you know what? Tomorrow, if I'm feeling better, I'm going to put everything in there all in one go cuz that I think that's going to feel like the right decision for me. That shouldn't be any of your decision-making tools, right? You know that that sounds ridiculous. But there's plenty of people out there who make those emotional decisions.
Whereas successful investors act very differently. In my case, I follow the Vax strategy, which is the strategy that I've created over the last 12 years. And how the process looks for me in making these decisions. So, deciding what to invest in, which, side note, I think is the most important factor in any investment.
What you invest in is going to be the deciding factor really because you could pick a bad company on a really good day and still lose money. I don't know if you remember all those cryptos and NFT projects all popping up all over the place a few years ago. Like where are they now, right? They were having a good day but they were fundamentally weak.
Whereas if you pick a fundamentally strong company, even if they're having a bad week or a bad month, they're probably going to be okay in the end. So, for me, what I invest in is so important. So, I spend the first chunk of my investment research looking at the fundamentals behind the company. Does it meet my specific 13-point criteria for investing in stocks?
If it does, great, I will invest. If it doesn't meet them, I won't invest. Just makes my decision-making really easy. Once I've decided what I'm going to invest in, the next thing is when am I going to invest and how much am I going to invest? So, I use spreadsheets to decide, okay, at this price I'm going to buy this many shares.
At this price I would buy this many shares so on and so forth. So, I plan that well ahead of time. And then also, before I even enter the investment, I know when I'm going to get out of the investment. So, I've decided, okay, when I get to this percent profit, I'm going to do this. When I get to this percent profit, I'm going to do this.
And I do not act until those things occur. That just removes the emotion and honestly removes the human element from it. And it just makes investing so simple and very fast. And I'll tell you what, once you've nailed that process and it's pretty much become automatic, right? Because you set your orders up front, you can set alerts, you know, for the profit side of things, the sense of relief that gives you is I think a really underrated thing in investing because if you're somebody who spends so much time worrying and stressing about your investments and, you know, checking your charts every 2 minutes, that's no way to live.
You won't enjoy it, you won't stick to it and honestly it's probably going to do you a lot of damage long term. Whereas having that structure, that system where you know, I do this, then this, then this, set it, forget it, that just frees you up and that's what investing should be like in my opinion.
Habit three, they document everything. So, Ray Dalio has kept investment journals for decades and he doesn't just track, you know, what he got into and when, but he also tracks what he was thinking at the time, what was the thinking behind each investment. So, he can look back at that and say, okay, that was my reasoning, this what I got out of it and this is sort of the result.
Now, that's worked really well for him for him because he can see, "Okay, this is what I was expecting to happen based on these factors, and this is what actually happened. So, in future, I need to change my behavior in order to get a different result." Which I actually think makes a lot of sense. What most investors do is they just pick a stock randomly, throw some money in, see how it goes.
They They see it works. Like, maybe they made some money. They're like, "Oh, great. I'll do that again next time." Or maybe they think, "Oh, do you know what? Um it didn't work as well as I'd hoped this time, so I'm going to put loads more money into the next one." Or they just got no structure there.
And honestly, it's really scattergun. It's the best way I could describe it. They don't know what worked previously, so they just do their best every single time to try and replicate that. But with no tracking, they're just clueless. In my personal process with investing, I am not the biggest fan of journaling in such detail as Ray Dalio.
I I I don't think that works so well for me. Honestly, I really just love to track the numbers. So, I like to look at, "Okay, this is where I bought. Um this is how much I bought. You know, this is where I sold. This is exactly what profit I took." But also, I look at what the fundamentals company looked like the day I got into it.
So, I take a really detailed view of that to see, "Okay, I made the decision to invest in this stock. These were all of the fundamentals on that day." So, then when I come to the end of the investment and I track it and I see what the result was, I've then got a screenshot of, "Okay, well, these fundamentals actually gave me this exact result here." And I quite like that.
I like that transparency because I think, well, in life, like tracking things is a really good idea if you want to improve it. So, you know, some people track their sleep scores. They track their steps every day if they're trying to improve their health. And I think having that level of detail on that data there just a great way to have visibility of what's happening so that if you want to make a change or an improvement, you can.
So, what that reveals over time is you can look back and say, "Oh, well, actually, it didn't really matter how I was feeling on this day." Or you know, if it was a good or a bad day, whatever. When I took those actions, those were the results I've got. And that's always been quite comforting for me because I know everyone talks about mindset and, you know, which is so important, don't get me wrong.
But really in life, the things that make the difference are what actions you take. Let's talk about stocks. You could be having the worst day ever, you could feel sick, you know, you got into an argument with your significant other, but if you click the right buttons at the right times and buy the right stock at the right price, you're probably going to make some money.
Was it the emotions or was it the action that really made the difference? It's obviously the actions. So, by tracking everything, you can look back and say, "Okay, well, those actions lead to those results, so I'm going to do those again." Habit four, they ignore the noise. Warren Buffett is famously indifferent to all short-term market movements.
Like, he's not sitting there watching the charts all day watching lines go up and down for hours, cuz he knows it's not important to his investment strategy. Think about it logically. Somebody managing hundreds of billions of dollars of investments cannot be reacting to every single headline they see or every tiny price movement.
It just wouldn't be feasible. And if that's what the best investors in the world are doing or not doing, that probably tells you all you need to know about how useful the news and things really are when it comes to your investments. Because think about it, financial media or news in general, what's it designed to do?
Is it designed to help you become a better investor? Of course not, right? We all know it isn't. It's designed to keep you engaged, keep you coming back and watching and keeping your attention. Well, that isn't going to serve you at all when you're trying to make decisions. And in my opinion, honestly, I really try and avoid news in general when I'm making investment decisions.
Because, in my opinion, news is always going to be written by a human or human and AI nowadays, that is going to have a bias. Like, humans have a bias, whether consciously or unconsciously, they believe something. So, if you're basing your decisions on essentially somebody else's opinion, then that's going to be easy to get wrong.
Cuz we all know you can go online and find two people that will disagree on absolutely anything. So, you don't want to base your decision on one of those people. That's why for me, I'm always basing my decisions purely on the data. So, this is what that looks like for me in practice. I make my investment decisions purely based on the fundamentals of a company.
So, are they making this much profit? Are they hitting this marker? Are they satisfying these criteria? If yes, then I will consider them as an investment opportunity. It's not a definite, because just cuz it's a great company, it doesn't mean it's a great time to invest now. But then it takes me to my next stage of, "Okay, so I would only invest in this stock if it got to this price.
That's a good deal for me." Or if it got to this price or less. So, cuz I don't want to be buying stocks at really expensive rates, right? You don't want to buy anything too expensive. So, I need to make sure I'm only buying it at a certain price, and that's part of my strategy, too. But I'm not then saying, "Oh, well, do you know what?
You know, the news was a bit good earlier about this company or about this industry, and I think it's going to do well. So, do you know what? Scrap my rules. I'm just going to buy." No, I never do that. It's like, "Look, this is what I've set. This is what my strategy is telling me, so I'm going to wait for this to happen." And if it doesn't happen, I won't invest.
It keeps it simple. But those investors who don't do any of this, and they don't have the plan yet in place, this is what they do. They end up either over-investing, so, you know, buying too many things at once just cuz there's so much, you know, shiny objects out there. So, they're buying this, buying that cuz that's going to be the next big thing, but all this might blow up, too, so I better get some money in there, as well.
They do that. Then they have some investments that are running, which, honestly, could be good investments. But because they read one slightly negative headline, they quickly panic-sell and get rid of it, and they're like, "Oh, I want to get out of this before it drops." Well, you've probably heard Warren Buffett's phrase of, like, "When others are greedy, be fearful.
When others are fearful, be greedy." Now, on the face of it, that really means, you know, when others are buying loads and being really greedy, you know, so take a step back, and maybe you want to get out of that and see what are they missing there? What What are they getting overhyped about? But on the flip side, when others are panicking and whining about the news and whatever nonsense they're telling you in the the headlines, well, do you know what?
There's probably some great buying opportunities in that. Habit five, they think in years, not days. Both Warren Buffett and Ray Dalio have talked about the power of long-term thinking when it comes to their investments. This allows them to make some really calculated decisions for tomorrow's world.
Whereas most investors are thinking so minutely short-term that it works against them, because there's too many bits of data for them to make any logical decisions. Think about it. If you were checking your portfolio every 10 minutes, well, there's going to be movement. Good or bad, there's going to be movement in the price.
Well, if you are checking it so frequently, you're going to be reacting so frequently. Do you think that's going to help you stay calm and act really logically? Of course not, right? That's why day traders, in my opinion, lose so much money because their emotions are all over the place. And you could be the most logical person in the world, but if you can see your money dropping consistently many, many times a day, it's probably going to do something to you.
Now, we've said there long-term thinking is the powerful move. However, I want to make a real distinction between long-term thinking and just being passive. I'm not a big fan of the word passive, particularly when it comes to investments and income. I think the idea of passive income has been really misconstrued.
You know, social media telling you that you can just sit on your bum all day and do nothing and get paid. We all know that's not how the world works. And so, I really don't like the idea of passive. And honestly, passive to me feels like you're just giving away control. Whereas, the opposite, and I think, you know, Buffett and Dalio would agree with this, long-term thinking is still in your control.
You're just looking at it from a broader view. So, when I get into investment, I'm not thinking about trying to sell it within the next seconds, minutes, hours, or whatever. I'm actually in in my strategy, it's what I call medium-term investing. So, I'm in positions for months at a time. Now, the benefit of that to me is, one, I don't have to act really rash and spur-of-the-moment like you would if you were day trading, of course, cuz I've got plenty of time to prepare and act calmly, which is what I've actually learned from these guys.
Plan well ahead of time what you're going to buy, when you're going to buy it, and when you're going to sell. It's It's perfect for that. But equally, by having that longer-term view, it means that I'm not glued to my screen every single minute of every single day because I know, if I've bought this, I've said where I'm going to buy, I've said where I'm going to sell, and placed all those orders up front.
Well, there's no benefit in me checking every 2 minutes. I can just actually check it once a day just to keep an eye on things and and monitor it. For me, that's given me so much more freedom in my life cuz, I'll be honest, I used to do that day trading as a career. And as it can be rewarding financially, it's it's not a lifestyle I would recommend to anybody.
Now, doing my strategy in 5 minutes a day, so much better. And honestly, I've been way more successful in the long term because it's a lot more sustainable to do that. So, not only have the long-term thinking for each investment you make, but have a long-term thinking for you as an investor and your future.
Because life is a long game. Everyone says life is short, but honestly, you've got a lot of years to do this. So, you've got to stick to it. You've got to make it achievable for you to do something consistently every day cuz I promise if you can be consistent, you'll be way more successful than somebody who's lucky.
If you found this useful, I made something that goes much further. Join the free masterclass where I walk you through the entire back framework, every step of the research process, how to size positions, and how to build the habits that make all of it actually stick. It's linked in the description. Subscribe for more content like this, and I'll see you in the next one.
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