Investor fatigue

Buy when others are selling and sell when others are buying is, on its own, about as realistic as anticipating a no-claims bonus from your insurer after employing a stop at a green light and drive-on through a red strategy. Sooner rather than later you'll get it wrong, very wrong.

100 monkeys sitting in a tree eating superficially identical fruit; half the fruit poisonous and the other half not. Underneath the tree lie the monkeys poisoned. The last monkey sitting in the tree would have guessed each fruit correctly until he doesn't. Is he smarter? Perhaps. He's just a monkey remember..

I can't recall a time when retail volumes were so thin. That's applicable across the instrument spectrum and true for most markets. Investment fatigue, a concept birthed in what has become a headlines-driven market, is very prevalent. Hedge-fund gurus of yesteryear, usually wholly reliant on their say-so to influence a  market, find little solace in the fact that the average investor just doesn't care anymore.

What Mr. Buffett really means when he says buy when others are selling and sell when others are buying is this: - buy only when you know what you're buying and sell only when you know why you're selling. If, like many others, you suffer from investment fatigue and are frustrated at consistently poor investment performance don't look to the other monkeys in the tree for guidance. The grass is not greener because it's on the other side. It's greener because it's watered. Now, more than ever, do your own homework. Accept that you won't always be right. Understand that a bad investment can stay that way regardless and do something about it.