投資者容易產生兩種擔心情緒，擔心的內容相反但都很讓人煩：第一是擔心經濟形勢好的時候錯過機會，第二則是擔心市場波動時虧損。兩種恐懼與理性決策之間是零和關系。也就是說，越被恐懼情緒支配，就越難理智。

作為投資者，如何實現盡可能理性呢？有一條建議：關掉電視。

我們辦公室里很少看財經節目。股市全天波動完全隨機，影響單個股票上下波動的因素也在推動市場波動，各種因素的目標和時間范圍可能與個人的目標和時間范圍沒有共同點。我認為電視節目制片人應該保證連續敘述，才能解釋隨機性。

財經頻道還會進一步影響理性，讓人感覺股票市場像個游戲。財經節目只會鼓勵人們加入游戲，隨著考慮的時間范圍從數年縮短到幾分鐘，可能將之前的研究結論拋諸腦后。

總看財經節目還可能讓人投資時不夠謙遜。財經頻道評論股市的嘉賓往往會樹立絕對正確的形象（與謙遜相反）。再說一次，我很同情他們，因為嘉賓上電視都在拼命推銷自己和自己的業務，必須表現出智商200的睿智形象，對每個話題都要點評一番。

你永遠不可能聽他們說出投資的實質：“其實我也不知道。”不愿承認不確定性存在危險，因為可能導致忘記投資其實基于概率。如果你開始認為未來只有一條路，可能就會忽略其他的路，搭建投資組合時忽略其他的風險。如果你相信自己對每家公司都了如指掌，能力范圍就沒有界限，過度自信可能導致無路可走（投資血本無歸）。

由于財經節目嘉賓永遠不承認“不知道”，也會自信地回答本不該問的問題，例如“經濟和股市下一步怎么走？”如果投資經驗夠多，很容易對股市和經濟下一步走向發表意見（通常是直覺）。然而，真正優秀的基金經理都在努力避免此類直覺，因為直覺可以準一次但難保次次準。

如果踏準了股票市場或經濟走向，也只不過是運氣，除了運氣沒別的。經濟和股票市場行為，特別是短期動向非常隨機。上帝不會讓人說準接下來會發生什么，因為這與賭博玩21點時預測下一張牌沒有什么不同。

當好投資者，而不是預言家

以前我和同事們經常自稱是“長期投資”同道中人。然而隨著時間的推移，自我判斷已經變成“買入持有（怎么也不賣）的投資者”。

另外我們認為，長期投資者的說法有點多余，因為股市上沒有短期投資。只要在投資股票，期限自然應該是長期的。否則只能算交易員，自欺欺人以為自己是投資者。不過，投資不僅要關注持有時間長短，分析時間長短同樣重要。

對我們來說，身為投資者就要有態度，觀察股票處理信息時都不能忘記。具體來說就是，應該想買入的企業剛好是上市公司，但心理上與看待私人公司沒有什么不同。可以查看新聞、季報指導（別管其中描述是“很棒”還是“令人失望”）、分析師評級上升還是下降，還有不管屏幕上出現什么標題都要問一個問題：企業價值受到什么影響？

這種觀點可以讓人從思想上解放，處理新聞流開始采取不同的方式，對日常新聞垃圾的干擾也能產生抵抗力。季度收益不再只是“超過”或“不及”業績指導。到最后只有一個簡單的問題，“企業價值受到什么影響？”過濾90%的噪音，才能扎扎實實投資。（財富中文網）

本文作者維塔利·凱瑟尼爾森是投資管理協會有限公司（Investment Management Associates, Inc.）的首席執行官、注冊金融分析師。他經常在ContrarianEdge.com網站上撰寫有關股市的文章。他也是Wiley出版社出版的《橫向市場小手冊》(The Little Book of Sideways Markets)一書的作者。

譯者：Charlie

審校：夏林

\Investors are prone to two opposing but equally debilitating fears: the fear of missing out when times are good, and the fear of loss when markets are volatile. These two fears have a zero-sum relationship with rational decisions. The more you are dominated by these fears, the less rational you are.

So what can we do, as investors, to move toward maximum rationality? Here’s one piece of advice: Turn off the TV.

We rarely turn on business TV in our office. Stock market movements throughout the day are completely random. The same actors that are influencing the up-and-down ticks of individual stocks–actors whose goals and time horizons may have nothing in common with yours–are driving market movements. I feel for TV producers who must provide a continuous narrative to explain this randomness.

Business TV presents additional dangers to your rationality: It reprograms you to think about the stock market as a game. In encouraging you to play that game, it puts you at risk of nullifying all the research you’ve done, as you let your time horizon dwindle from years to minutes.

It also threatens to strip from you the humility that is so needed in investing. Business TV guests who provide their opinions on stocks have to project an image of infallibility (the opposite of humility). Again, I sympathize with them – they are there to market themselves and their business, and thus they must project the image that they have an IQ of 200, holding forth on every possible topic.

You are never going to hear from them the words that are the essence of investing: “I don’t know.” Being unable to admit uncertainty is dangerous, because it may cause you to stop thinking about investing in terms of probabilities. If you start thinking that the future has only one path, you may ignore other paths and thus other risks in your portfolio construction. If you tell yourself that you’re an expert on every company, then your circle of competence has no boundaries and your overconfidence may take you to places (and into investments) where you have no place being.

Also, since “I don’t know” is not part of their vocabulary, business TV guests will confidently answer questions that should never be asked, such as “What will the economy and stock market do next?” If you have been investing long enough, it is hard not to develop opinions (hunches) about what the stock market and economy will do next. However, good money managers work diligently to extinguish these hunches from their investment process, because those hunches lack repeatability.

If you get the next leg of the stock market or economy right, that’s just dumb luck – nothing more and nothing less. Economic and stock market behavior, especially in the short term, are very random. God forbid your recent forecasting success goes to your head, because your ability to predict what will come next is not much different from your predicting the next card to be turned up in blackjack.

Be an investor, not a forecaster

My colleagues and I used to identify with our self-proclaimed “I am a long-term investor” brethren. However, over time this phrase has morphed to mean “I am a buy-and-hold (and never sell) investor.”

Also, the term long-term investor, in our view, is a bit redundant, since there is no such thing as short-term investing in the stock market. If you are investing in stocks, then your time horizon should automatically be long-term; otherwise you are just a trader deceiving yourself into thinking that you’re an investor. However, investing is not just about the holding time horizon. The analytical time horizon is just as important.

To us, being investors means having an attitude with which we look at stocks and process information. We buy businesses that happen to be listed on public exchanges, but our attitude toward them would not be much different if they were private. We view all news, be it quarterly guidance (whether it’s “great” or “disappointing”), upgrades or downgrades by analysts, or any headline crossing our screens in the context of one question: How does this impact the value of the business?

This perspective is liberating, because you start to process the news flow very differently. You develop a resistance to the distractions of the everyday news dump. Quarterly earnings stop being about “beating” or “missing” guidance. Ultimately, this simple question, “How does it impact the value of the business?” filters out 90% of the noise and puts us on a solid investment footing.

Vitaliy Katsenelson, CFA, is the CEO at Investment Management Associates, Inc. He writes about the markets at ContrarianEdge.com, and is the author of The Little Book of Sideways Markets (Wiley).