Source: Qile Club
Professor Kelly McGonigal of Stanford University conducted a fascinating experiment in her book The Willpower Instinct—19 chimpanzees versus 40 humans.
In essence, 19 selected chimpanzees were pitted against 40 students from Harvard University and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. The challenge was simple: each participant could either immediately consume two portions of their favorite food or wait two minutes to receive six portions instead.
The results showed that 72% of the chimpanzees chose to wait, whereas only 19% of the humans were willing to delay gratification. The conclusion drawn was that human patience is even lower than that of chimpanzees.
We do not intend to delve deeply into why the experiment yielded such results. Any single study involves specific methodologies, environmental conditions, and participant characteristics that warrant further investigation, and its findings may not be universally applicable. Nevertheless, similar phenomena raise a question worthy of sustained reflection: in the world of investing, patience has become increasingly scarce.
01. “Because no one wants to get rich slowly”
I don’t recall exactly where I read it, but someone once asked Buffett: “Your investment philosophy is so straightforward—why doesn’t everyone else follow it?” Buffett replied: “Because no one wants to get rich slowly.” That single sentence encapsulates nearly every issue we face in this era.
After human society entered the industrial age, productivity surged dramatically, resulting in more output over the past two centuries than in all prior history combined.
As this productivity began translating into wealth, we witnessed one wealth myth after another—countless stories of overnight riches. Perhaps precisely when everyone feels that “if we don’t get rich soon, we’ll grow old,” it is time to step back and re-examine the very nature of patience itself.
02. Patiently identifying investment opportunities
Faced with thousands of complex and diverse stocks in the market, how can investors identify those that will truly generate returns? This is a question virtually every investor must confront. While there may be many answers—and undoubtedly complex ones—patience remains an indispensable element in any viable solution.
The approach used by the renowned baseball player Ted Williams offers a highly instructive lesson for investing. He is the only player in the past 70 years to achieve a batting average of .400 in a single season, and he divided the strike zone into 77 grids, each the size of a baseball.
He would swing only when the ball landed in his 'best' grids—even if it meant risking a strikeout—because swinging at pitches in his 'worst' grids would significantly reduce his success rate.
As we all know, investing is the monetization of one’s understanding. Given that every investor holds different views on the world, the markets we operate in, and individual listed companies,
we must, like Ted Williams, continuously seek investment opportunities aligned with our own understanding. Perhaps we are fortunate enough to find such opportunities quickly, but more often than not, it requires tremendous patience to wait for them to emerge.
This demands unwavering conviction and extraordinary patience, focusing capital on truly meaningful opportunities rather than trading merely for the sake of activity.
As Buffett once said, imagine you are given a card with only 20 slots—each representing an investment you can make in your lifetime. Every time you invest, you mark off one slot. This simple rule could dramatically improve returns for most investors.
03. Patient Holding
Patiently identifying suitable investment targets is merely the first step on the long march toward successful investing. What follows—and is even more critical—is steadfastly holding onto those assets with genuine long-term growth potential.
Everyone knows that compound interest is often called the eighth wonder of the world: seemingly modest returns can accumulate over time into astonishing wealth. Yet few recognize that the full power of compounding can only be realized through resolute, patient holding.
Without disciplined, long-term holding, compounding is easily interrupted, causing all prior gains to be lost.
The principle is not difficult to understand, yet it is far from easy to truly hold positions patiently. The reason lies in the fact that during most of the time we hold an investment, the period tends to be uneventful—these mundane phases yield expected long-term returns close to zero, while only a minority of moments actually drive significant gains or losses.
Since we cannot predict when these decisive price movements will occur, the only way to capture their associated returns with certainty is through patient holding.
The challenge, however, arises because when our own holdings are in such uneventful periods, other assets in the market often appear to be in exciting phases, with alluring price surges constantly tempting investors. Even a slight lapse in patience may lead investors to sell their current holdings and chase after those seemingly attractive opportunities.
Over the long term, this behavior typically results in investors buying into assets just as their exciting phases are nearing an end, causing them to miss out on substantial gains from their original holdings. This psychological dynamic—buying high only to see prices fall, and selling low only to watch prices rise—is largely attributable to the tendency of chasing momentum and selling into weakness.
04. Patiently Navigating Change and Constancy
Of course, during the holding period, both the market environment and the underlying companies themselves are continuously evolving. For investors, patient holding does not imply rigid inaction; rather, it requires making appropriate adjustments in response to changes in the market and in the fundamentals of the invested companies.
For assets whose fundamentals have improved and whose future outlook is optimistic, one may consider increasing position sizes; for those whose prospects have deteriorated, timely reductions—or even full divestment—are warranted. This is an ongoing process that demands constant monitoring. Expecting to buy an asset and then ignore it entirely, without exercising patience or diligence, will not sustain long-term returns.
Therefore, when confronted with a complex and ever-changing landscape, investors must maintain great patience and meticulously analyze every event’s subtle implications to fully understand its true impact on their holdings.
At the same time, regardless of how markets evolve, certain fundamental principles remain unchanged. These enduring elements represent the most foundational, basic, and immutable objective laws that govern market behavior.
Investors must therefore always maintain a humble and cautious mindset, continuously strive to learn, and refine their understanding in pursuit of truth. This is not a process that yields immediate results; on the contrary, it often involves navigating numerous detours and enduring periods of doubt, struggle, and refinement. Such a journey demands tremendous patience, a long-term vision, and a commitment to diligently attending to even the smallest details.
Patiently navigating the changes and constants of capital markets requires investors to understand the causes and origins of these dynamics, avoiding rigid adherence to outdated practices. What matters is not merely following trends or stubbornly resisting the tide of history, but rather calming the mind, exercising patience, and deeply comprehending what changes and what endures—ultimately refining a personal investment philosophy suited to oneself.
05. Patiently Seeking Wisdom
For investors who truly regard investing as a form of cultivation, the deeper purpose of striving for excellence in investing is to draw closer to wisdom. Lifelong investing is, in essence, a lifelong journey of patiently seeking wisdom.
Capital markets serve as both a barometer of economic activity and a mirror reflecting broader societal dynamics. They bring together the most representative enterprises across all sectors. By studying listed companies’ business models, products, and developmental trajectories, investors effectively gain insight into the historical evolution and current state of the socioeconomic landscape, enabling them to make informed judgments about future trends.
Even more gratifying is that this pursuit of wisdom often comes with an added reward: investors frequently reap substantial returns from accurate judgments and foresight.
Precisely because this process is so intellectually engaging and potentially highly rewarding, it demands long-term accumulation. Many theories and viewpoints must be personally tested through practice, allowing investors to discard those that are erroneous or unsuitable and ultimately discover their own authentic wisdom.
06. How to Cultivate Patience?
At this point in our discussion, we inevitably arrive at a crucial question: how can one cultivate patience? From the preceding analysis, we can readily conclude that while specific answers vary by individual, certain universal principles undoubtedly apply.
Cultivating patience begins with clarity about one’s own objectives. For investors, life is a continuous process of self-improvement and gradual progress toward success—even if that progress is slow. As long as one steadily moves closer to one’s goals, one is on the right path.
Once you clearly define your true objective, there is no need to rush or envy the tales of overnight wealth that surround you. Understanding that wealth accumulation follows its own inherent rhythm, and staying focused on your goal, is the foundation of all patience.
Exercising patience means understanding the inherent laws governing how things develop—both capital markets and listed companies operate within these objective developmental principles. Therefore, whether we are identifying investment opportunities or holding existing investments, we must cultivate sound thinking habits, meaning that we should engage in deliberate reflection before taking action. Only through clear and thorough thinking can we avoid abandoning our course of action, regardless of whether we face favorable or adverse circumstances.
Going further, we must internalize patience to the point where it becomes a natural part of our behavior—and ultimately an integral aspect of our character—so that we genuinely enjoy the benefits patience brings to every facet of our lives, rather than having to exert extra effort to sustain it. This requires us to maintain constant awareness and observational capacity, enabling us to distill insights from everyday experiences and make rational thinking an instinctive practice. Through this process, individuals naturally become more rational and composed, steadily drawing closer to wisdom and continuously improving themselves.
Editor /rice