Will Individual Investors Ever Learn - To Buy Low And Sell High?

I created this blog to share my journey - as an individual investor - to create long-term wealth by using the seemingly easy rule of "buying low and selling high". As this article by Harish Rao in The Mint shows, implementing this "rule" does not seem to come easily to most individual investors:

Data released by the Association of Mutual Funds in India (AMFI) shows that Net inflows (Purchases - Redemptions) in 2008 was 3,088 crores, as compared to 18,967 crores in 2007. This is a huge fall in net inflows and reflects the prevailing mindset amongst Indian investors. (What is interesting is that nearly 60% of inflows for 2008 came from ELSS, a tax savings category). The figure for January 2009 is no better. Net inflows into Equity is a negative 35 cr. So 2009 is off to a bad start as well.

...Till Sept 2008, the net inflow into equities was 4,004 crores. However, in the last quarter - when the equity markets tanked and sank to new lows, the net outflow was 916 crores. Thus, despite buying equities during the first nine months of the year, when things became really bad, investors redeemed their holdings.