Suze Orman: This Is the Biggest Danger to Your Future Investment Success

Suze Orman is not only a personal finance expert, a No. 1 New York Times Bestselling author and, according to USA Today, a “one-woman financial advice power house,” but a teacher, as well. Using her platform, Orman has built an empire in financial literacy , educating the general public on better ways to save, spend and invest their money.

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In a recent “Women & Money” podcast episode entitled “ Suze School: Avoid the Biggest Danger to Your Future Investments ,” Orman broke down some of the most common and damaging pitfalls you can get caught up in that hurt your financial future.

Here is what Orman said is the biggest danger to your future investment success and ways to avoid it.

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Hindsight Is 20/20

Orman recalled a recent interaction with a friend who regretted not buying stock in a company when it was low — before the company took off, making shares go through the roof. While Orman initially agreed, she ultimately said, “Your biggest danger to your future investment success is your past wishes.”

She added, “At some point in your investment career, you look at stocks like Nvidia or Apple or Palantir or Broadcom … or things that came out a long time ago, that if you just had bought them, maybe you would have invested $10,000, and today maybe it would be worth $2.1 million, and you spend all of this time calculating how much money you would have made.”

She noted that this is a mentality that can become a trap. “When you spend time doing something like that — you should have, you could have, ‘I wish I had’ — then you spend your time trying to find the next stock like Nvidia, like an Amazon, like an Apple, like so many that are out there.”

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Look for Today’s Good Investments

Instead, Orman suggested that investors should be looking at stocks that are similar to those companies, yet have so much further to go. Keeping an eye on the big ones is never a bad idea. However, it blinds investors from potential wins that are still in the making.

Orman recalled that numerous people over her almost 40-year career have come to her and lamented the big stocks they should have bought when they could afford them. Orman would respond that there “are still good stocks.”

Avoid Anxious Investing

When these same people would come to Orman for advice on which investments to make, Orman said nerves would kick in about what the next financial boom was, overshadowing what was presently available for a good initial investment that would only take time to grow.

“Because you’re watching the movements of these stocks go up and up and up,” said Orman, “and then all of a sudden, a few days ago, the stocks that have been going up and up and up are now going down and down and down. And you get so depressed.”

Go With the Flow

Orman shared that her biggest mistake over the course of her time investing was selling too soon.

“When you’ve sold something that you’ve made money on, but then it continues to go up, you sit there hoping it would come back down,” Orman explained, “so that you could buy it again.”

Orman’s advice is that when things go, you have to go with it, no matter the flow. “If you are invested in good quality ETFs, if you are invested in great individual stocks, maybe you need to just stop watching the markets all together. Maybe you just need to know that, over the long run, they are really going to be doing OK.”

Dollar-Cost Average

The key to investment success, according to Orman, is the courage to take opportunities and buy when stocks are down.

“It’s important that you … look at things in the market as opportunities,” Orman said. “It is times like this, where there is chaos in the world, there is chaos in the markets — this is when you start to dollar-cost average. This is when you start to take advantage of the down days.”

Orman tells listeners over and over that it is important to always dollar-cost average — something that she herself has been doing for quite a while. “If you get a large lump sum of money or you are going from a 401(k) into an IRA and you have a large sum of cash, dollar-cost average into the positions that you want.”

Dollar-cost averaging can smooth the road when it comes to wild markets: You automatically invest on a regular basis, no matter what the market is doing. In some ways, it is a set it and forget it model in which, for a certain period of time, you put the same amount of money into a target security, no matter the price, at a consistent pace.

Orman said, “Don’t be afraid that ‘oh, I have to invest in it right now, because it is going to go straight up, and I’m going to miss it.’ Nothing goes straight up.”

If, on the off chance it does go straight up and looks strong, Orman gave the greenlight to go ahead and buy that stock again.

Understanding the Market

Orman summed up the key to financial success as not backing down during tough times in the markets. Stocks go up and down, as is their nature. There is nothing anyone can do to predict or control the fluctuations of their worth. However, looking at previous investments with a 20/20 lens for what should have happened is doomed to blind investors on what to put their money into in the future.

Orman advised anyone in the investment game to be brave, stick to a stock, do not sell early and, if you can, buy more to keep the stability on an upward trend.

This article originally appeared on GOBankingRates.com : Suze Orman: This Is the Biggest Danger to Your Future Investment Success