Humans seem to excel at making things more complicated than they need to be…

If you suffer from “information overload” regarding your investments, consider implementing the six simple steps below, offered by an investing legend.

From Chris Mayer, chief investment strategist, Bonner & Partners: On May 28, 1962—dubbed “Blue Monday”—the market fell 6%… its worst single-day slide since 1929.

At the time, Peter Stormonth Darling was an investment manager at investment bank S. G. Warburg & Co. He strolled in to tell his boss, Tony Griffin, how much the market had fallen.

Darling recounts:

Tony sat back, paused to reflect a moment, and just laughed. This was not because he had anticipated the crash or sold his own investments—he had not. It was his way of keeping the event in perspective. I’m sure it was the right way to act.

It was a useful lesson, and it helped me to view with some equanimity subsequent market collapses, such as those in 1974, 1987, and 1998.

Darling would eventually become chairman of Mercury Asset Management from 1979 to 1992, when Merrill Lynch acquired it.

During his storied career, he came to know a number of wealthy people, some of whom were also shrewd investors. He studied them, trying to discover their methods. And he learned what successful investing is all about.

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By Darling’s account, shrewd investing comes down to these six actions:

  • Set aside as much as you can for long-term investing in stocks.

  • Buy shares in a small number of companies in which you have great conviction.

  • Do not look at prices every day or every week. “You will only give in to fear and greed.”

  • As in collecting, buy the best—avoid the junk.

  • Only buy companies you can understand.

  • Hold indefinitely.

Reeves’ Note: Chris is the all-time best-performing investment analyst at Agora Inc. (PBRG’s parent company). For over a decade, he provided his readers with average annual investment returns of 17%. In 2008, as global markets crashed, he was up on the year… and beat the S&P 500 by over 40%.

Today, Chris is releasing his latest stock pick. If you’d like to put Chris’ proven outperformance to work for you, click here to learn more (but you must do so before midnight tonight, Eastern time).

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