Flashback to my late 10’s/early 20’s.
I’m walking towards the train station. The local branch of the bank I work with advertises a mutual fund with average annual returns of 25%. It also mentions that past results are not guaranteed to occur in the future.
I’m impressed with the 25% figure. And I was yet miles away from grasping the concept of compound interest. I want to know more.
Eventually I go in. I talk to someone about it. The guy asks me questions I don’t know how to answer. Today I know he was trying to assess my risk tolerance.
I regret not asking for books to read. Instead I felt overwhelmed by his questions, believing that the whole thing was just too much. I ended up not investing in anything, which I don’t necessarily regret. The real regret is in not asking for books to read due to the feeling I wouldn’t understand any of it anyway, or that I would be incapable of applying it… Who knows… I could have come across the Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham or one of the many books advocating low cost indexing back then…
Better late than never