Column published in Toyo Keizai ONLINE: Advice from the Master Investor's Teacher

Good morning, this is Matsushita.

As part of the pre-preparations for the targeted investment seminar held last weekend,

I reread the book “The Secrets of Your Money and Investment Mind”

from about a month ago.

This is the third time,

and even after reading it twice before,

I couldn’t fully understand the content,

and I reread it with amazement at its startling content.

This time I reread it with a sense of astonishment.

The more you read this book, the more you realize

how ill-suited our human brain is for investing,

which is why 80% of investors keep losing,

with clear evidence for that inevitability.

You can read about it clearly.

It is a book that individual investors should definitely read.

(There seems to be only used copies with premiums now…)

Among them, a particularly impressive passage is

Benjamin Graham, the great investment analyst,

in a lifetime interview, suggested that investors should run a paper portfolio for a year.

Psychologist Baruch Fishman has studied over 30 years

about overconfidence. Fishman recommends using an investment diary.

“Record what you were thinking at the time,” Fishman says.

“And make those forecasts as clear as possible.”

(From “The Secrets of Your Money and Investment Mind” (Nikkei Inc. Publishing))

Benjamin Graham is the teacher of Warren Buffett, the god of stock investing.

The master’s mentor advises that you should perform a year-long simulation with a paper portfolio.

It is advised that you should conduct a year-long simulation with a paper portfolio.

Additionally, psychologists advocate the use of the “investment diary,”

and say, “Record what you were thinking.”

Since I began investing for others in 2004,

I have consistently argued for the necessity and importance of an

investment diary.

I started keeping an investment diary myself in 2001.

Since then, I have kept an investment diary, trade records,

trade ideas, trade rules,

and by always writing things down on paper, I have continued investing

and shaping profits.

From reading this book, what I understood is that

we tend to react and act reflexively and emotionally,

and that leads to investment losses.

To overcome those reflexive and emotional brain processes

we need to take time to slowly

deliberate and analyze,

and the most reliable way to do that is

to put into words what we are thinking and feeling on paper.

That is exactly what I have been practicing and advocating.

What I have been implementing and promoting is physiologically aligned with the brain

and has been advocated by many predecessors and experts.

With backing from these professional perspectives and advice,

I will continue to strongly promote the importance of the investment diary

and the efficacy and meaning of “writing investments.”

In order to consistently generate profits in the future,

“writing investments” is the most reliable method,

and the first place to experience that is the “investment diary.”

If you look at price movements and news and

always react emotionally and cannot control your mindset,

please start an investment diary from today.

Purchase of the book “Investment Diary,” supervised and written by Makoto Matsushita, is here.