The road to investing wisdom begins with ‘I don’t know’

MANY people think that investors fail because they do not know enough. I beg to differ. In my experience, it is our ego that blinds us and makes us do stupid things.

Mark Twain said it best: “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” We often make mistakes because we are too confident in our knowledge. And it gets worse when we find out that we were wrong.

That is why, as investors, one of the first things we should admit is simply: “I don’t know.”