Not only did Mr Fisher have a brilliant talent, but he talked a lot of sense and no more so when asked to single out the most important lesson he had learnt from his career as an investor. The response is worth repeating: "It is just appalling the nerve strain people put themselves under trying to buy something today and sell it tomorrow. It's a small-win proposition. If you are a truly long-range investor, of which I am practically a vanishing breed, the profits are so tremendously greater."
That rings a cord with my own investment style, which is to run my profits for as long as possible until it becomes obvious that the rationale for making the investment in the first place no longer holds. It also rings true with the timescale I am working to for the majority of my share recommendations. Let's be clear on one thing: I have never once suggested that anyone trades my share recommendations for short-term gain. This seems to have been lost on some readers who think by simply buying shares in the companies I am writing about as soon as the articles are published, without doing any research of their own, is a sure-fire way to riches. Even worse, some are buying in at any price, which is utter madness.