Because it isn’t easy and simple at the same time.
Buffett says it perfectly here: Investing is simple but not easy.
The comparisons I would make to other domains is:
Losing weight is simple but not emotionally easy,
Saying not to others is simple but not emotionally easy
Doing the difficult things in business, every day, is simple but not easy.
Likewise, investing is simple, but certainly not easy on people’s EMOTIONS.
Look at The Nasdaq for example, it has been the best performing major stock market in the last 25–30 years.
12%-13% average yearly returns has been seen since the mid 1990s.
And yet the Nasdaq went down about 75% after 2000, 50% in 2009 and about 40% this year, before the recoveries.
The S&P500, Dow Jones and some other markets haven’t been quite as volatile, but have still given long-term investors excellent returns with a lot of volatility along the way.
So the basic tenants of investing are simple:
- Buy and hold for decades – or buy, hold and rebalance.
- Have an allocation to bonds that increase as you age.
- Be diversified but not overly so.
- Never panic or get too excited.
- Reinvest dividends.
- Be excited and take advantage of markets falls but don’t wait in cash in the meantime (market timing).
All very simple, but emotionally difficult.
So many people panicked in March 2020 and 2008 for this reason.
It isn’t easy to stay calm when the media, your friendship group and everybody else is shouting “this time is different.”
People thought that in 1941 when Hitler was moving through Europe, or during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
They certainly felt that way in 2008, when hardly anybody thought markets would recover in barley 3 years.
All these things are easy to understand, but hard to implement in practice, for many.
Control Emotions: One of the hardest skills can an investor master.
It needs time, effort and experience.
If you are ready to take the first step in your investing journey , enroll in my course “Investing For Beginners: How To Invest With Confidence” HERE.