Why You Don’t Have to Be Good at Math to Start Investing

Investors don't need to have advanced math skills to invest. We don't all need to be a modern day "Jessie Livermore", crunching changes in price in our head all day long. Practicing patient investing in the long term can be a viable way to be a successful investor.

Buy and Hold

The most popular strategy of buying and holding is relatively simple and is the best strategy to win in the long term. Buying and holding doesn't require any sophisticated math computations or knowledge of stock options or Greek symbols, etc. It simply requires that you invest in companies you know or like and are confident in their ability to perform in the long term.

We are all in a bull market a majority of the time and over the long term the stock market provides a return to investors. So, if you just want to invest in the S&P500 you do not need ANY advanced math skills. With most passive strategies you can just buy, hold and dollar cost average into your favorite stock, ETF, index fund, cryptocurrency, etc.

Moreover, there is relatively little mental math since most market metrics like: PE ratios, Moving averages, EBITDA, EPS, etc., are all already calculated for us and widely available in most marketing reporting tools and applications.

Qualities of a Successful Investor

If you want to be a successful investor, qualities like emotional intelligence and patience will be much more beneficial to you in the long term than knowledge of calculus and linear algebra! You are much better off keeping up with news related to your stock portfolio and leveraging the tools available to you than aiming to be the best at mental math! Understanding market breadth is also crucial and once you get a handle and feel for it, you'll become that much better of an investor.

Recommended Reading

Finally, I highly recommend reading Reminiscences of Stock Operator by Edwin Lefèvre, it's about the story of Jessie Livermore. Someone that was insanely great at doing mental math and crunching numbers in his head as a young boy in bucket shops. However, ultimately his life ended in tragedy due to personal problems and his emotional state, math wasn't the main culprit.