Investor traits - Courage, judgment and fortitude

Success in value investing requires courage. You need to be brave to buy the down-and-out shares, those rejected by your peers.  You may get blank expressions as they try to understand your unusual behaviour, and you must be prepared to accept the risk of embarrassment that follows from being different.
Be on the lookout for out-of-favour, overlooked or misunderstood shares that have earnings growth potential the rest of the market has missed.
If you can buy shares where all the negatives are chiefly known, and therefore the share price is depressed, then any good news will have an overwhelmingly positive effect.
A key mistake made by investors is to buy into shares where investors generally have high expectations of growth and where any negative news could have a devastating effect on the shares.
Markets tend to be led by the latest fashions and fads.  This results in over-valuation of the in-vogue shares and under-valuation of the less glamorous but generally good shares.  Investors became caught up in a frenzy and ignore the good solid companies.
For a successful investment career you can live without glamour stocks or bull markets. The key requirements to carry you through are judgment and fortitude:
‘Judgment singles out opportunities; fortitude enables you to live with this while the rest of the world scramble in another direction…to us ugly stocks were often beautiful’ says John Neff, one of the great value investors
Failing conventionally
Of course failure whi....