Seven Traits by Mark Seller

The article is in continuation with this one. Request you to read the first part before you deep diver into the traits.

Here you go with the seven traits:

• Trait #1: The ability to buy when others are panicking and sell stocks while others are euphoric. It reminds me of the wonderful quote by Buffet. “Be greedy when others are fearful, and fearful when others are greedy, but don’t think you can outsmart the market.” During the dot com bubble it was way easier to buy as every technology stock was rising with leaps and bounds. However, in 2008 financial crash it was way difficult to buy when every stock was falling each day.
• Trait #2: Obsessive about the playing the game and wanting to win just like a cricket match, where we are obsessive for India to win.
• Trait #3: The willingness to learn from past mistakes, where our hindsight bias plays a significant role. Distorting our past memory just to make it look like as if our decision was right. Eventually we fail to learn and correct out mistakes so that we don’t repeat them.
• Trait #4: The story of Long Term Capital Management, where a team of 60-70 PdD with sophisticated risk models failed. The greatest risk is control is common sense. We ignore simpler things suggested by common sense which says thing won’t work out as planned. However, just because the computers say it will work out, we fall into the habit of trusting the machines more than oneself.
• Trait #5: Confidence in one’s own conviction. Its very tough when everyone in the world is raising fingers at you. During the dot.com bubble Buffet was hugely criticized publicly for ignoring the technology stocks. During the pandemic, he is even the criticized by the President himself, still he stuck to his guns when mostly start following the herd.
• Trait #6: Important to have both sides of the brain working. Generally smart people has right side of the brain as dominant, as they probably loath math and therefore the left side of the brain is not that active. Fiance people tend to left brained as they are good with numbers. Investing is an art mixed with numbers. So, it good to have both sides working to the mark. If one cannot clearly write, one cannot think very clearly. If you don’t think clearly, you are in trouble my dear friend.
• Trait #7: The most important and rarest trait of all. We don’t like short term pains even if it would result in better long-term results. For instance, people will be willing to buy a chocolate now instead of half an hour later when you get twice the chocolates at the same price. We are willing to forge to exercise as it result in temporary pain. However we are willing to have long duration pain during the later stage of the life by saying no to exercise today.

The above mentioned traits are easier to develop in a children or a teen than in an adult person. It becomes difficult to change the hardwired brain as you grow up. The sooner one change, the better one’s life is.