The Intelligent Investor – Jason Zweig

Jason Zweig’s been writing a column for The Wall Street Journal for a long time. In this edition he summarizes what he’s been trying to teach over the years. (Subscription might be required.) He summarizes it as saving investors from themselves. It’s a good piece, and includes much of what I try to teach in Retirement Watch. Take a few minutes to review it.

It’s no wonder that, as brilliant research by the psychologist Paul Andreassen showed many years ago, people who receive frequent news updates on their investments earn lower returns than those who get no news. It’s also no wonder that the media has ignored those findings. Not many people care to admit that they spend their careers being part of the problem instead of trying to be part of the solution.

My job, as I see it, is to learn from other people’s mistakes and from my own. Above all, it means trying to save people from themselves. As the founder of security analysis, Benjamin Graham, wrote in The Intelligent Investor in 1949: “The investor’s chief problem – and even his worst enemy – is likely to be himself.”