Write These Six Words Down

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If you are looking for the best advice I can give anyone getting started in investing, you’ll need to travel back to November 1989. At the time, I was debriefing on the Blanchard’s NCMR New Orleans Investment Conference of that year, at which I had spoken. An attendee asked me a question, and my answer included the six most important words in investing. I wrote of the scene:

THE MOST IMPORTANT WORDS IN INVESTING

I’ve just returned from speaking at the biggest investment conference in the U.S. I now speak at only one national conference per year, and Blanchard’s NCMR annual extravaganza is clearly the place to be. My “Double Your Money” seminars were packed with Intelligence Report subscribers, and I was delighted to personally meet so many of you. The seminar/workshop format is an excellent forum for in-depth strategy discussions and detailed answers to subscriber questions.

Most of Us Are Risk-Averse

What questions were asked most often? Over three-quarters of the queries had to do with zero-coupon bond strategies, risk/reward, and interest rates in general. Indubitably the majority of conference attendees were risk averse and looking for ways to make money while sleeping well in the process.

One woman from the Midwest asked me what I thought were, in just a few words, the most important guidelines in investing. My short reply: “full faith and credit,” and “compound interest.”

Write those six words down and remember them when you set out to review your family financial plan.

I urge you today, as I did then, to make compounding and fixed income the corner stones of your investment portfolio.

Originally posted on Young’s World Money Forecast.