There are crossroads in your life. Moments in time when a fork appears in the road and you have to make a decision.
I’ve had a couple.
One was when I was applying for the University Air Squadron. My Dad was a fighter pilot in the RAF and I was groomed pre birth to follow in his footsteps. I was not unhappy at that prospect. The interview took a day. I knew the Wing Commander doing cadet selection, flew through the interview, blitzed the physical. I was born to the task. I knew every word to Top Gun for goodness sake. But at the end of it all a Sergeant took me aside, gave me a coffee and a fag and casually asked me the crucial question. Did I want to be a lawyer in the RAF (I was doing law at university). This was the fork. Of course I desperately wanted to be in the RAF, but I didn’t want to be a lawyer, I wanted to be a pilot. So what did I say? “No”.
Wrong. That was it. Didn’t get in. Thumbed my nose at them and became a stockbroker of all glamorous things.
Another fork was when I was engaged to my first wife. It was all a bit unplanned and not very well considered, but the freight train of engagement and marriage was going full tilt with all the families, a vicar and two cats on board. She stood at the top of the stairs. She was older than me and a lot less naïve. I’m sure she knew it wasn’t right but the only way to take this lot off the rails was with an explosion. She ripped her engagement ring off and threw it down the stairs at me. “Lets just call the whole @#$%ing thing off” she screamed as three thousand pounds of diamonds hurtled past my ear. This was the fork. What did I say? “No”.
Wrong. Five hundred thousand dollars and five years later.
It’s a bit unfair really. Life’s big decisions are often thrust upon us with no warning and no preparation. We don’t expect them, don’t have time to consider their consequences, and simply have to leap. Yes or No. Left or right. A snap decision ends up affecting the rest of our lives, deeply, permanently, irreversibly and sometimes fatally. It’s like a head on with a Mack Truck. React in an instant and live with it for the next fifty years, right or wrong.
As a broker we see some great portfolios. Had one last year that had inherited BHP with a cost price of 10c. Bet it wasn’t a blue chip when that was bought. But whatever the successes the only thing everyone remembers are the ones they got wrong. Its not the losses, it’s the missed profits. I sold 50,000 Zinifex at 218c almost exactly three years ago. Now 1571c. That’s $676,500 that would be sitting in my Super Fund right now. Boy I remember that. Sidney Kidman famously sold a fourteenth of BHP for $100 (up from $60). Now worth $1billion.
What “might have been” is a powerful emotion that can smother success. Ever met someone who sold 3,000 Commonwealth Bank at six dollars or 350,000 Oxiana sold at 14c. I have. They don’t care about the 200% capital gains in their portfolios. They remember that little fork in the road in 1992, 15 years ago, when for some fleeting moment they found a reason to sell. 15 years carrying around a mental millstone like a medal.
There are decisions that lead to success and regret. Regret roots itself more deeply. It’s why all professions are blamed for anything that goes wrong and praised for nothing that goes right. It why its easier to be miserable than happy. That’s how our mind works.
Brokers know this of course. Its why 90% of research recommendations say buy. There is no mileage in a sell recommendation because eventually, with the market in long term uptrend, it will be wrong. And they will be remembered for that and that alone.
That’s life. A constant succession of forks. The art of it is not to dwell on the fork ups. We spend far too much time remembering what we did wrong and the rest of it finding someone else to blame it on. It’s in our nature. But it serves little purpose.
The secret of happiness? Controlling what goes through our minds. Dwell on disaster and dark moods become our habit. Dwell on success and it will shine on our every moment.
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