Don't confuse brains and a bull market ...

Yep, just buy more property

 

Totally agree! I also believe to be the best investor you can be you really need to experience one recession/downturn in whatever asset class (shares/property/etc) you invest in.

Share investors around the world and property investors in many parts of the world (except Australia) experienced GFC, Gold bugs are currently experiencing a recession that they thought was impossible around 2010.

Question is when Australia experiences a recession / property downturn, investors who are least leveraged with good cashflows and psychological temperament to not sell are the ones who will come out stronger than before.

Cheers,
Oracle.

 

Luck is when preparation meets opportunity.

So, yes.

Be prepared; have skills, knowledge, confidence, resources, tools. When opportunity comes, you can capitalise.

 

Just a few more of these posts and I'm going to start a new business investing in motivational posters

 

Absolutely.

Increasing your work rate, your knowledge, your sacrifice and dedication..gives you the best chance you can have of success - in any endeavour.

 

Definitely, but luck and success are 2 different things.
Luck can't be created or destroyed, it just happens.
Success is probably the complete opposite of luck, it doesn't just happen out of the blue.

 

I believe there are 2 kinds of luck.

1. Pure luck. For little or no apparent reason something just happens.

2. Educated Luck: The more we educate, prepare, focus, strive, take relentless action - the 'luckier' we seem to become with deals, profits, outcomes etc. In this sense, we definitely 'create' the luck or positive outcome.

 

While I Agee with all of these , I think they are missing the point I'm trying to make in this thread .

Yes ...

You need to take action when others sitting around talking , you need to actively seek out information and opportunities ...

But there are plenty of people around who have done all of those things and haven't had the same degree of success .

The point I'm making is the element of luck involved in reaching a point in your life where you decide to take a certain action , and that coincides with a window of opportunity in your world / environment where you actions can be successful.

Bill Gates wouldn't have become Bill Gates if the state of development of computers wasn't in a position to be receptive to his specific insights . Yes he worked hard and smart and took action when others didn't , but he was lucky that the window of opportunity was open for him to walk through it .

We have a neighbour who realised they needed to take action a few years ago . They knew Brisbane and bought an IP that has since gone down .

My son is looking at buying in Brisbane and was talking to a work colleague who then recited his fathers tale of doom about buying in Brisbane and has drummed into him the mantra of don't buy in Brisbane ...

While there maybe some people who start investing with a great understanding of the whole process , I'd guess most of us remember a specific event that triggered our interest and started us on the path . If that event hadn't occurred at a time when taking action lead to a successful outcome , the subsequent path we took may have been different .

Cliff

 

Well if it wasn't for my bad luck I wouldn't have had any luck at all.

 

See Change , if you weren't aware of this already, you may be interested in reading about the Duning Kruger effect.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect

 

I see it differently. You need to eliminate luck as much as possible. Luck is something out of your control (eg lotto).

If you buy a random property, your success depends solely on luck,

However, if you research a little, then you will eliminate lots of bad choices (eg OTP, mining towns, flood prone), so your universe of choices consists of only a few bad options, and lots of good or great options. You have eliminated many of the options that the uneducated (& more likely to be unsuccessful) will perceive as 'just bad luck'.

So the harder I work, the luckier I get is true, but to be more accurate it should really be the harder I work, the less luck is required.

 

I really like this line of thinking.

 

Leo , I don't consider the second element luck , or certainly not from the view point of the person taking the action .

It may seem like luck to an uninformed outsider and the person taking the action might portray it as luck .

It's probably more acceptable socially to say to your friends that you've been lucky rather than telling them the truth , which is usually along the lines of .

While you were

1. spending all your money on new clothes which you gave to the salvo's after one season
2. Buying a flashy car / OS holiday which you couldn't really afford .
3. Replacing your kitchen which was perfectly functional but didn't have the latest colours
4. Etc

I was

• Wear my clothes until they needed binning
• Going on camping holidays
• Buying cars through motor auctions and only buying that flashy car which is now when you can't afford it and even then think twice
• Installing a DIY kitchen from Bunnings
• Etc

Outside the element of luck involved with the timing of the start of our journey , everything else has been the result of hard work and insightful thinking.

Cliff

 

Interesting way of saying it .

I wouldn't go as far as saying I want to eliminate luck . If it happens , great , the way I look at it is :

I don't want to rely on luck .

If you rely on luck , you aren't fully in control and what you do isn't repeatable . That's the reason to educate yourself in what you do , so you can repeat it, again and again .

Cliff

 

All good points but there is definitely dumb luck for example 2002/2003 when everyone who owned anything made lots of money. Suddenly everyone was talking about property, how much they had made, how smart they were etc etc.
During this time we saw an avalanche of RE TV shows about property. Property was very much in favour as everyone doubled their money. All dumb luck, I don't think its as easy presently and it requires a little more thought to avoid numerous possible banana skins.

 

I agree and that's probably the biggest problem I see with new and not so new investors. Lack of education. To me, its absolutely crazy to think that you can skip the education step and just listen to a few people, meet a bank manager and be off to a great start.

I don't believe the significance of property education via all sorts of materials is mentioned enough by experienced investors. And for the life of me I don't know why. This surely has to be the #1 thing to first recommend to any newbie who seriously wants to build a wealthy and sustainable portfolio, IMO. We just simply cannot marginalise the education step. Its just so important imo.

 

You know, I really look up to your posts because of this. You are one of the few members who gets it and can say it like it is and not have an uppity demeanor. I see so many opinionated farts who got lucky because of Sydney rising. But obviously they all put the rewards in the "My research. My sacrifice. My effort. My success" etc categories. No one really acknowledges what lies outside of the usual scope.

Mate, I have used this extensively in the interviewing process I employ for ICT professionals. Very effectively eliminates chaff from the wheat. Nice new perspective to see this forum and property investors with the foresight of this effect.

 

Steven Bradbury is considered by many to be the "luckiest" gold medalist in Olympic history.

Throughout his career, he adopted a racing strategy of attempting to stay on his feet and race somewhat conservatively. In the 2002 winter Olympics, Steven only progressed from the quarter final due to a disqualification of the defending world champion for overly aggressive and physical racing. In the semi-final, his strategy was to maintain his feet and hope someone crashed, which they did. Steven realised a dream of racing in an Olympic final and didn't hold out any hope of winning against a younger and quicker field. We all know what happened in the final.

Steven probably does deserve his famous moniker. But what most people don't realise is that he is a boy from Sydney (where the harbour hasn't been known to freeze over that often) who put himself out there; made sacrifices; made the most of his abilities; found a passion and dedicated himself to learning and most importantly, prepared and adopted a strategy that meant that he could strike when an opportunity presented itself. In the quarter final he got lucky, the semi-final he got really lucky. What happened in the final was the realisation of his perfect strategy.

Doesn't that sound familiar to most of us here?

 

Exactly my point . It was dumb luck that we started our journey around that time .... But we recognized what had happened in Sydney , checked out other places , then realized the same thing was about to happen in Brisbane , rocky , Townsville and Hobart . Most people don't go off and buy close to 20 properties in the next 18 months . To do that wasn't dumb luck from my view point . I saw what was happening and took action and on several occasions since then , the same thing has happened .

Cliff

 

Interesting view point on Bradbury . Regardless of the element of luck , everyone knows you don't even get to the Olympics without an incredible amount of hard work.

Personally I still like the lucky spin on Bradbury . Almost the quintessential way for an Aussie to break out winter Olympic gold medal drought . I think it makes it even bigger in terms of " Aussie folk lore " .

Cliff