After reading this Reddit post, I thought of one of the best Warren Buffett quotes: “If you aren’t willing to own a stock for ten years, don’t even think about owning it for ten minutes.”

If you are “playing” stocks, you are gambling, not investing. Go to a casino or bet on your sports if you want to gamble. People can gamble with stocks, but you need an actual specialized strategy and skillset to succeed.

Most people do not know where the market is going in the short term. Most long-term investors say it is not even possible to make these predictions. There is more safety in buying ETFs; however, ETFs, Indexes, and Mutal Funds most likely tank along with individual stocks in a recession or a sharp downward market.

An investor’s best friend is time. I remember an investor telling me a story about buying stock in Netflix in 2011. The stock price cratered by 80% because they hiked the cost of their service by more than 60%.

If you had bought Netflix stock at the high of 2011 and saw your shares crash 70-80%, you would still be up by 300-400% today! If the stock price can recover, you are likely back up over 1,000%, as you were in 2021.

Watching a stock you sold soar x1,000% in price is a terrible feeling. Imagine if you bought into Netflix and believed in their streaming service plans back in 2011….. but due to fear, you completely sold out and missed out on all those gains. That is the worst type of pain you can experience. Even worse than watching a stock price fall to rock bottom. Imagine how the co-founder of Apple felt who quit and sold his 10% of Apple back to Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs for $800 in 1976.

If you are playing with stocks do not forget these are real businesses run by real people. By owning just one share, you are a shareholder of the company. Most games you play produce binary events, winner or loser. Business is quite a bit more multifaceted. There could be several winners or several losers. Some companies can lag for decades and eventually become grossly profitable.

Always remember time is the most powerful force in investing. It makes little things grow big and big mistakes fade away.