Dear Financial Voice Reader,
Why are we addicted to games, and not to fruitful skills like learning to invest? What if the same thrills we got from Facebook games or Age of Empires we could get from investing and so learn a useful skill, and what if we got paid to do it?
We love games because it involves skill, builds our confidence as we succeed. That is fun. We love to concentrate on such activities. We are in control when we play games. We don’t mind losing in games as long as we are learning a skill to get better.
That is human nature. Well learning to trade and invest is the same. Look at my power list of the UK companies which added most returns for their shareholders this week, picked from the 100 largest British companies.
What is interesting about the list is that these biggest risers which have powered ahead in the past week, see a property company as the one with the highest value score out of 10 ie its best value for the longer term. Others like Tesco beg the question are they rebounding from a slump, or having a longer term turnaround?If you want something which really teaches you a skill, is fun and unlike Candy Crush can make you money, learn to trade. But people are afraid to lose money. What if you got paid by the broker to trade? Check out http://etx.tradermind.com and http://inter.tradermind.com to get money to trade.You see trading gives you the same thing you look for in other activities. It gives that sense of autonomy, control, skill, achievement and that’s because nothing is guaranteed.Think about how boring a game would be if you always won. You have to turn around your thinking so it is not that you want to be guaranteed to win, but something that tests you. You need something which stretches you. You need an attitude that you are learning.That is why so many people don’t succeed in investing and trading. They too often think of it as something it isn’t.They need to see it as an opportunity to learn, to profit. All success is about attitude and the attitude to learn whether you should buy Sainsbury or Tesco. And then it is about concentration, like a game, about learning a skill, like a game, being in charge, like a game, being all down to you, like a game, spending time, like a game, sometimes losing, like a game. It is about all these things. So I hope with the right attitude of learning you will endevour to spend more time learning about investing and trading and less time on Candy Crush, or Age of Empires. But there is another reason. As we all get older, and the cost of living goes up and the incomes stay frozen, we need to learn these essential skills and even more importantly, to pass them on to our children.
Alpesh Patel
