Ann: CYBG PLC Third Quarter 2019 Trading Update, page-159

Well, no one bats 100 every time in this investing game.

But, as I am fond of telling anyone who cares to listen:

I'm not particularly smart and I have stood on my fair share of investment landmines over my investing career (ironically, more so in the past 18 months than any other similar time frame in the past).

Yet, despite me plodding along doing things merely averagely well (and sometimes quite dumbly), owning shares in publicly-listed companies has created wealth for me and my family beyond my wildest expectations when I started my investing journey.

That, I think, is a statement about the wealth creating machine that is the compounding machine that is the equity market: that, over the long-term (provided one is reasonably sensible about it), it leads to financial success, despite the making of many mistakes along the way.