Topic: How To Invest

What is Pat’s commentary for the week of March 12, 2019

Article Excerpt

You might say there are two kinds of rules that can help you with investing decisions—soft and hard. Soft rules apply to things that can change such as laws about securities and other financial matters, accounting procedures, industry practices, technological development and so on. Soft rules can remain fixed for lengthy periods, but they are always subject to change. Changes can come abruptly or gradually. Hard rules come out of human nature. They are much more fixed than soft rules, and they never really change. But hard rules are more like tendencies than laws. Other considerations can temporarily overshadow or neutralize them, so much so that they seem to have disappeared. However, their disappearance is only temporary. I first got introduced to a hard rule in my late teens, when talking to a friend of mine and his mother about cars. My friend and I both had part-time jobs and we were thinking about buying our first cars. My plan was to…