The key to successful investing is to have a clear understanding of the market, the risks involved, a disciplined approach, a long-term perspective, a strong understanding of the fundamentals, and a clear understanding of the risks and rewards.
And we also suck in messages from everything from the television, to advertising, to marketing, etc. These are hugely powerful forces that define what we want and how we view ourselves. When we're told that banking is a very respectable profession, a lot of us want to go into banking. When banking is no longer so respectable, we lose interest in banking. We are highly open to suggestion.