Both personal and professional investors can learn to craft better investment strategies, make better individual investment choices, and gain greater perspective through their love of golf. You need to know your long-term financial goals and how you’re going to get there, just as you to understand how the details of the game and your swing can lead to lower scores and a deeper passion for the experience.
Practice and Training
From basic working knowledge of your investing platform to doing the deep-dive research into specific stocks and various trading strategies, from diversifying your portfolio to knowing when to take a calculated risk, practice makes perfect, or so they say. We say that there’s no such thing as perfect—not in a round of golf, not over the course of a lifetime of investing. In golf, you need to learn some sense of the proper form, before then also putting in several hours on the driving range and on the putting green. In the best of circumstances, this hard work will pay off in effortless seeming success on the course and in your investment returns.
Course Management and Club Selection
It’s not enough to rely on single stock tips, no matter how juicy and intuitive they might seem at the same time. You may feel most comfortable with a 7-iron in your hand, but just because you’re a 7-iron away from the pin doesn’t mean you should be shooting at the flag if it’s just 20 feet from a water hazard. Likewise, you need to be able to fit the club selection and what kinds of shots you have in your bag with the ultimate goal of getting the ball in the hole. With investing, this really just boils down to consistent and honest risk-reward evaluation and then being able to trust your read and take action. Even then, course management and club selection can only cover for so much and it doesn’t help the bad short that will occasionally happen to anyone. Overcoming adversity and not panicking is a great lesson for golf and for investing.
Different Golf Games and The Cost of Doing Business
Maybe instead of a traditional game of golf, you prefer the relative ease and fun of miniature golf or Topgolf. There’s no shame, and there is a lot of low-stress fun to be had. Maybe you don’t need to fret over competitive investing and trying to beat the market. Moreover, golf isn’t cheap and investing fees can add up. Likewise, in most settings, the greens fees is a consideration about where to play. Likewise, most people consider the cost of doing business with a financial advisor, investment firm, and/or trading fees.