Someone shared the quote in the subject line in a comment to a blog post recently and it really struck home with me.

I think it's important to stop every now and then to look back and assess how much has actually been accomplished in a year.

In the day to day focus on what needs to be done, we tend to forget that. We don't give ourselves enough credit for the things we've achieved through a day to day commitment. We keep looking for big overnight changes and letting ourselves be derailed by frustration when they don't happen.

If you focus your investment club efforts more toward really understanding and following the the businesses of a few companies rather than continually trying to shop for new ones, you'll get more out of the time you're spending in your meetings and you'll make progress toward improving your investing success.

For example, before you're going to get good at this, you need to be comfortable with some of the basics of the business language. You wouldn't be able to understand a novel if you hadn't learned to read. You can't really know about whether a company is a good investment unless you can understand the story that's presented in their financial statements and reports.

It's not really that hard to learn enough to make some big improvements in your expertise. In a recent post (here) I gave a suggestion for a book you could use to easily learn one new part of the language each month. If your club read through the chapters together and then looked at the topics discussed in the financial statements of the companies you own, you will find that a year from now, you will be much more comfortable with evaluating potential investments more like a business person.

It's not really hard, but it won't happen overnight. If you start now, you'll be amazed how much you will have learned a year from now.

If you want to get better at investing, don't spend each of your monthly meetings for the next year hoping you will get a good stock tip from someone. Spend it learning a little bit more about being an investor. Practice what you are learning with the stocks you already own.

I guarantee, if you don't, "A year from now, you'll wish you had started today"

--
Laurie Frederiksen
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