In most areas of life, hard work pays off.
When it comes to investing, the opposite is true.
The harder you try to be a “good investor” and work hard at managing your portfolio, the worse your returns will likely be.
This lesson is one of the most difficult for investors to learn. Even (mostly) rational buy-and-hold index investors can get into trouble when they try and time the market or begin dabbling in picking individual stocks they think will outperform.
I am not here to tell you that investment returns don’t matter; of course, they matter.