What makes a person to excel in everything he or she does?

"Ancora Imparo" are said to be spoken by Michelangelo (the largely self-taught Italian sculptor, painter, architect) on his 87th birthday.

Translated from the Italian, "Ancora Imparo" means "I am always leaning."

I think to be able to excel in our life, we have to always learn and open up our mind to know and learn new things. Things always change, people change, environment changes. The moment we stop learning and think we have enough to do something, we will start to miss out a lot of things.

This applies in our family, work, and society life.

Long Term Investment in Stock Market

Just sharing:
(I am no longer holding the shares now, as i sold in 2014).
I bought UMS shares in 2013 abt 38.5cts.

If let's say i bought 100,000 @38.5cts/share. It had cost me $38,500 (my capital).

UMS issued 2 times bonus shares in 2014 & 2017 every 4 shares to 1 share. So my 100,000 shares would had become 100,000 x 125% x 125% = 156,250 shares.

UMS paid 4 times dividend a year (quarterly) with total of 6cts per year (except 2013, UMS paid 6.5cts). So i should have collected:
2013: 100k x 6.5cts: $6500
2014: 125k x 6cts: $7500
2015: 125k x 6cts: $7500
2016: 125k x 6cts: $7500
= $29,000.
UMS value as per time of writing = 156,250 x $1 = $156,250.
Value + dividend = $185,250.

This is just an example of one stock which such capital/portfolio growth can only be achieved through long term holding in a good company. Of course, we have to continue monitoring the company quarter to quarter, year to year to check if the result is still on track. Should the result out of track and the share price growth is much higher than co's growth rate, we should not hesitate to divest our holding. Or should we found other co with better prospect and lower pe, we should divest and move to others.

For this reason, i strongly believe long term investing is the best.

Just sharing my humble opinion.

Appreciating The Role of Luck - from the book "The Most Important Thing Illuminated" by Howard Marks

1. We should spend our time trying to find value among the knowable- industries, companies and securities - rather than base our decisions on what we expect from the less- knowable macro world of economies and broad market performance.
2. Given that we don't know exactly which future will obtain, we have to get value on our side by having a stronger held, analytically derived opinion of it and buying for less when opportunities to do so present themselves.
3. We have to practice defensive investing, since many of the outcomes are likely to go against us. It's more important to ensure survival under negative outcomes than it is to guarantee maximum returns under favorable ones.
4. To improve our chances of success, we have to emphasize acting contrary to the herd when it's at extremes, being aggresive when the market is low and cautious when it's high.
5. Given the highly indetermine nature of outcomes, we must view strategies and their results- both good and bad - with suspicious until proved out over a large number of trials.