Founder & CEO Karl Kaufman shared some of American Dream Investing’s successful habits in U.S. News & World Report with a featured quote at the end of their article 6 Good Habits of Successful ‘Do-It-Yourself’ Investors.
This is the third time we’ve appeared in U.S. News & World Report. Would you say you’ve adopted some of these habits as a Member?
Here are two successful habits from the article:
They play “small ball.” Good Main Street investors accumulate assets over the long-term with small, incremental buys, says Karl Kaufman, founder and chief executive officer of American Dream Investing, in Boca Raton, Florida. “To use a baseball analogy, instead of swinging for home runs, we do-it-yourself investors consistently keep hitting singles,” he says. “Since the stock market is so unpredictable, we buy and sell a little at a time and look for long-term opportunities. This way, we have a better chance of getting a good price for our trade.”
They don’t take it personally. “You’ve got to keep emotion out of it, never fall in love with a stock and reserve the right to adapt your position based on changing market conditions,” Kaufman says. “The reasons you once had to invest in a stock may erode over time, or breaking news about a competitor breaching a company’s moat need to be taken into account. You have to be able to react to macro and micro conditions and change your strategy at a moment’s notice.”
All of the above characteristics, and a good dose of what Kaufman calls independent thinking, can turn an average, or even failing, do-it-yourself investor into a successful one – no matter what a scornful Wall Street insider says.