Patience is a virtue, they say. Anyway, I'm pretty sure that without patience you cannot be a good investor.
A recent article in
Scotland on Sunday has highlighted the importance of patience for savvy consumers. It reported - encouragingly - that, according to a poll commissioned by Standard Life,
only one in eight of us would choose the instant gratification of a £640 holiday this year, rather than wait five years for a holiday worth £5,000.
Experiments with young children show that we learn to be patient at about 3 to 4 years old. This is the age when, for example, a child can be presented with the following deal: "here's a cookie; if you can wait 5 minutes without eating it, I'll give you two cookies!"
So we all learn the basic principle pretty early on: sometimes it is better not to take a reward straightaway but rather to delay receiving the reward and hopefully let it grow: delayed but amplified gratification.