"People have different senses of time."
Myron darkened each arrowhead. "Some live for the future; some live in
the moment; some--most--are in the middle. It's a natural thing. As far
as risk/reward goes, we can keep a given balance in any time-horizon.
We can be risk-adverse, say, short-term or long-term." Myron underlined
the arrow.
"What we don't want to do is mix up the two. Short--term and long-term
investments are different. Not only are the investments themselves
different, but someone who is patient and looks far ahead won't be
happy with in-and-out activity. Someone who is action-oriented, who is
used to seeing results right away, won't wait years for a company to
develop or for interest rates to drop. You see what I'm getting at?"
"I do," Oliver said. "It's interesting. I guess I'm more toward the
patient end. Risk? I don't mind risk. But I wouldn't want to lose more
than half. It's important to me that half, anyway, always be there."
Myron wrote a few words on the pad.
"There are advantages to the patient approach," he said. "Taxes are
lower if you hold securities long term. You can buy into promising
companies cheaply--if you can give them a few years to grow.
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