In A Roller Coaster, the starting point and ending point is the same.
In Aircraft, your starting point is a different city / country than your destination at end of the journey.
In A Roller Coaster, your purpose is to have fun in the ups and downs. You don’t aim to reach anywhere other than from where you started.
In an Aircraft, you are not too bothered about the journey. All that matters to you is to reach your destination (preferably in stipulated time).
If you sleep in a roller coaster, you miss the fun as the purpose is to enjoy the ups and downs.
In an aircraft, you can sleep, watch movies, listen to music, talk to your co-passenger. In short, do anything other than worrying about the ups and downs of the journey.
Now, lets look at this analogy vis-à-vis intraday trading and long term investing.
Intra-day trading is like a roller coaster ride. People don’t really reach anywhere but do it for a kick. They just keep watching the markets and get thrilled about the ups and downs.
Long term investing is like boarding an Aircraft. Someone will board an aircraft because he wants to reach a destination. For him, the ups and downs in the journey are immaterial as long as he reaches his destination. So he will start an investment and then not keep worrying about it. As long as a trained pilot (investment manager) is taking care of his flight (investments), he doesn’t bother about the ups and downs.
(Imagine a hyper passenger who keeps disturbing the pilot about how to drive or about the coming obstacles!! It may result in an unwarranted crash )
Its now upto us to decide. Whether we want to reach a destination (retirement) , or we want to ride for fun. Our investment choice and investment behaviour will depend on this decision.
We look forward to your valuable comments and feedback.
The Author Prof. Saurabh Bajaj (BE, MBA, FRM, CFGP) is CEO with Nidhi Investments, Mumbai. He may be contacted on saurabh@nidhiinvestments.com if you have any questions.
(The views mentioned in the article are personal opinion of the author)
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